Replay
by Barb LP
Summary: Harry flees his home to avoid performing accidental magic again (thanks to Aunt Marge). But when number four, Privet Drive is attacked, he becomes the chief suspect and a fugitive from both the Muggle police and the Ministry. He has no idea that this will irrevocably alter the rest of his life. (H/OC, H/G, R/Hr, R/L, N/Hr) Now COMPLETE!
1. Over the Wall

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 **Notes:** This was originally posted on FictionAlley on 19 February, 2004. It is NOT related to the _Psychic Serpent_ universe at all but begins during the summer BETWEEN _Order of the Phoenix_ and _Half-Blood Prince_ (the summer that Harry turns 16). After that it will jump to Harry's adult years and ONLY the content of the first FIVE canon books will be taken into account. (No Horcruxes, no Slughorn—nothing that occurred in the last TWO books, which were not available at the time.) It will be 64 chapters long and will not always be from Harry's PoV. It will also involve "next generation" characters different from those in the epilogue of _Deathly Hallows_. So don't worry when it departs from the last two books—just kick back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

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 **Replay**

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 **Chapter One**

 **Over the Wall**

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He should have bolted when he had the chance.

Surely it wouldn't have hurt _too_ much to leap from the moving car as it zoomed down the road from London to Little Whinging. It would probably have hurt less than having to be in the same house with _her_ for a fortnight.

 _Whirrrrr THUMP! Whirrrrrrr THUMP! Whirrrr THUMP!_

Harry Potter awoke to the sound of his aunt's hoover ramming against his bedroom door repeatedly. He rolled over and put his pillow over his head, willing the noise to go away; he knew Aunt Petunia was trying to rouse him to do housecleaning. _She_ would be arriving that evening, and despite the fact that the house was usually spotless (except for any place that Dudley had been shedding crumbs) his aunt was compulsively cleaning more nonexistent dirt from the carpet outside Harry's room.

It went on.

 _Whirrrrr THUMP! Whirrrrrrr THUMP! Whirrrr THUMP!_

And on.

 _Whirrrrr THUMP! Whirrrrrrr THUMP! Whirrrr—_

Harry sat up and screamed above the noise of the hoover and the thumping, "All right, all right! I'll help you clean if you _stop that!_ "

The motor on the vacuum was abruptly switched off and his aunt opened his bedroom door. "Did you say something, then, you layabout?" she said acidly. "Eight o'clock in the morning, and still in bed! Make yourself useful! Marge will be here in nine hours and the house is a disgrace, now that you're back. Oh, and we've also invited Yvonne to dinner, so I don't want any funny business!"

Harry bit his tongue, trying to refrain from telling her that the disgraceful state of the house (it wasn't _that_ bad, in his opinion) was the fault of Dudley, who was also still abed (and probably would be until noon, as was his wont since returning from Smeltings). "I'll do anything _except_ hoover the upstairs, Aunt Petunia. Anything but _that_ ," he said emphatically.

"Oh, no, you don't—" she began, and then proceeded to tell him about every place upstairs that was expected to be spotless. He groaned but tried not to overdo it.

"Aunt Petunia! Next thing you'll be telling me I have to hoover the _downstairs_ , too."

Her eyes blazed at his insolence. "Just for that—yes! You do! Now dress and get to work!"

When she was gone he couldn't prevent a grin from crossing his face; he'd become rather good at manipulating her over the years. Hoovering was one of the few household chores he didn't hate. When he was the one operating the machine he didn't mind the noise, as he was in control of it, and it let him think his own thoughts while mindlessly pushing it back and forth. It also caused a major headache to anyone who _wasn't_ operating it, and gave him a very good excuse for pretending not to hear anything the Dursleys said to him. However, if he'd volunteered for this job, he'd have been cleaning windows or polishing silver in a trice and probably wouldn't have been permitted anywhere near his aunt's precious dirt-sucking machine. He shook his head over her naïveté; he'd been pulling the same stunt since he was nine years old, and she still fell for it. (Of course, after all these years of his complaining about it, she must have been convinced that it was his least favourite thing in the world, which made her more determined to thrust this chore upon him at every opportunity.)

He sat up with a groan and fumbled for his glasses on the table beside his bed, still having to blink a bit to bring the room into focus even after he'd put them on. Now that he could see the world a little better, he reached into the drawer in the table to pull out the letter he'd received from Professor Dumbledore just after he'd returned to Privet Drive at the end of his fifth year, an eternity that was only a fortnight ago.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _I do hope you have a good holiday. Though I must ask you to remain with your relatives for at least six weeks to ensure the efficacy of the spell of which we spoke at the end of term, this letter is meant to bring you news of a more immediate nature. While it is acceptable for underage witches and wizards to perform magic outside of school in case of emergency, as you did last summer, this does usually require an inquiry into the reason for magic being performed, something we wish to avoid again if at all possible. After speaking to Minister Fudge, I have convinced him to grant you amnesty from the Restriction on Underage Magic during the summer holiday on certain conditions:_

 _1) You must not perform magic frivolously, for your own amusement or for others';_

 _2) If you perform magic for the purpose of protecting yourself or others, you or the other people involved must be in IMMEDIATE danger;_

 _3) You must not perform magic in the vicinity of Muggles if at all possible, but if this is not possible, you must take steps to contact a Ministry official immediately so that Obliviators may administer memory charms to the Muggle or Muggles in question._

 _While it may not seem that you are receiving more latitude than other students, I assure you that Minister Fudge has promised that there will be no inquiry unless you violate one of the above conditions. As difficult as it sometimes is, we would like to try to keep you out of the public eye during the holiday. (The Minister is also using his influence at the Daily Prophet in this regard.)_

 _Carry your wand with you at all times, Harry, and be very alert. I do not anticipate that you will have need of this amnesty, but I also do not want you to be unnecessarily anxious about being unable to use magic to protect yourself, should the safeguards in place prove to be inadequate in any way. This does NOT mean that you may use a summoning charm any time you wish to avoid crossing the room to fetch something. You should also bear in mind your relatives' general distaste for magic and be considerate of their sensibilities regarding this. I am certain that you do not wish to find yourself before the Wizengamot again and trust that you will conduct yourself accordingly._

 _Have a good summer, Harry._

 _With warmest regards,_

 _Albus Dumbledore_

Harry _happened_ to drop the letter onto the kitchen table when he'd received it at breakfast the day after he'd returned to Privet Drive. Dudley and his aunt were still recoiling from the owl that had delivered it, which was soaring out the open window again. "Oh, can I have my letter back, Uncle Vernon?" he'd asked innocently when his uncle had picked up the heavy parchment and started glancing it over. "If I should need to do…anything I normally don't do here this summer, I want to be certain I have that as proof that I had _permission_. Of course, the headmaster probably made a copy before he sent it, but still…" Harry didn't know any such thing but he didn't imagine it would be difficult for Dumbledore.

His uncle had turned an alarming shade of raspberry (which had put Harry off raspberries for a week) as he handed the letter back to his nephew, hand shaking. "I don't care _what_ that letter says. _I_ do not give you permission to—to engage in any _abnormal_ behaviour under my roof, at any time, for _any_ reason. Do you understand? Never! And what do you mean 'made a copy?' Since when do _your kind_ use copy machines?"

Harry raised his eyebrows. "I didn't say how he did it," he'd answered with wide-eyed innocence, avoiding the 'M' word. "And if that letter says I have the right to protect myself, then I have the right to protect myself. I think it shouldn't be hard to convince someone in authority that if I were locked up again with almost no food that I would be perfectly in my rights to take action to put a stop to that, don't you agree? _If_ that sort of thing doesn't happen, I don't see why I should need to do anything at all. Right, Uncle Vernon?" Harry said, glaring at his uncle. The raspberry colour intensified and his uncle's rather large moustache was quivering with rage and impotence. Harry also thought it possible that his uncle was remembering his exchange with Mad-Eye Moody at King's Cross.

"Petunia!" he roared suddenly. "The tea is cold! Harry has wasted so much of my time on this I'm going to be late to the office. Make sure you give him plenty to do to keep him busy today, as punishment." He gave Harry an evil grin. "Try to convince someone that _that_ requires you to 'defend' yourself, if you can. I expect to hear that you have followed all of your aunt's orders to the letter!" He rose and strode toward the door, turning at the last minute and saying, "To. The. Letter." Spit flew from the corners of his mouth. He turned on his heel and strode down the corridor away from the kitchen. Harry picked up the parchment from the floor, where it had fallen during Uncle Vernon's tirade. When his head was below the table, Harry grinned. Maybe _that_ would keep his aunt and uncle from even threatening to lock him up again.

Harry sighed as he put the letter back in the drawer. Four more weeks to go. And half of that time would be spent with Aunt Marge. Which wouldn't have been _so_ very bad if he hadn't had to send Hedwig to Hermione's house. He'd already sent letters with Hedwig to Hagrid and the Weasleys to warn them that he wasn't to receive any owl-post during Aunt Marge's time on Privet Drive. After that he'd sent the snowy owl off to Hermione, who'd agreed to act as a go-between; anything that Hagrid or the Weasleys wanted to send to Harry during that time would be sent to her and she'd send it to Harry by Muggle post. (Harry had told her that the Weasleys still didn't quite grasp the concept of 'stamps.') This would be particularly necessary if he was to get anything for his birthday, which would come at the tail end of the Fearsome Fortnight, as he'd taken to thinking of it. It would also mean that all of his post would be slightly delayed, but there was no helping that.

After dressing and eating breakfast, Harry took much of the day to hoover the house (his ears were still ringing), and with five o'clock fast approaching, he braced himself for Marge's arrival. As the clock struck five, the crunch of the gravel was heard from Vernon Dursley's car pulling into the driveway. Harry knew he was supposed to open the front door, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. So Marge Dursley's imperious finger rang the bell of number four, Privet Drive moments later, immediately causing Harry to think fondly of the previous Margeless days he'd spent in the house since returning from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, to be referred to as St Brutus's Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys when Aunt Marge was about. (To be referred to by the non-Marge Dursleys as "that place" when she wasn't.)

"Open the door!" his aunt screeched, trying to smooth down Dudley's thick blond hair. Harry's own hair was standing on end as usual, which Marge would no doubt criticise. Feeling like he had a stone in his stomach, he turned the knob.

There she was, as large as life. Marge Dursley. With each passing year, she seemed to develop an even greater similarity to her brother, from the spherical body ( _Had the Ministry wizards really finished the job of deflating her?_ Harry wondered.) to the moustache (very nearly as full as Vernon's) on her beefy purple face. As ever, Ripper was under her arm when Harry opened the door. She thrust her suitcase at Harry as she entered, still clutching the old bulldog (who growled at Harry) and otherwise utterly ignoring him. He grunted as the wind was knocked out of him by the suitcase. Clutching the monstrous piece of luggage, he staggered toward the stairs and began to ascend the flight slowly, hoping he wouldn't lose his balance and hurtle to the bottom, ending up in a heap in the front hall, Marge's one-ton suitcase on top of him.

He tried to avoid listening to the sickening conversation between the four of them. It was, on the surface, a mutual admiration society, but he knew that each of them had his or her particular agenda; he had heard his aunt and uncle discussing Marge's will with Dudley while they were anticipating her visit. Marge had recently asked her brother Vernon to be her executor.

"Is that a new handbag, Marge?" Petunia gushed; Harry had reached the top of the stairs and he put Marge's suitcase down with a thud, turning to look into the front hall. He thought the handbag very ugly: orange-coloured mock crocodile skin with a zebra-print strap. He suspected that this was also his aunt's opinion, as she had much more understated taste.

When they had been discussing Marge's will, he had been cleaning the oven; from its echoing interior he had heard his aunt say, "I hope she doesn't try to give me one scrap of clothing she has ever worn. She seems to think I fancy her taste. If she leaves me that rot, just throw it on a bonfire. The rest of the world will be well rid of it."

 _She seems to think I fancy her taste._ Well, Harry thought, if you didn't go about gushing over her things every time you see her, she probably wouldn't. He felt it would serve his aunt right if she _were_ left nothing but Aunt Marge's hideous clothes.

"Have you lost weight, Aunt Marge? Why ever would you do such a thing? You'll waste away to nothing!" Dudley said to her, his voice loud and false-sounding. Harry wasn't sure whether Marge would take this to be a compliment, as a rhino would appear svelte beside Dudley, despite his being more muscular since taking up boxing. Vernon Dursley was now having Smeltings uniforms custom-made for him. It was a good thing Dudley was gaining muscle; if he'd grown any wider, he would have brushed both sides of the hall when walking from the front door to the kitchen, something he still did far too frequently. Plus, Harry had actually heard _Dudley_ , of all people, insulting Marge's weight, again when they were discussing the will. "When do you think the fat old girl will kick it?" he'd asked his parents.

Harry had thought they would be appalled, but with jovial good humour, Uncle Vernon had said, "Oh, don't worry. High cholesterol, clogged arteries, blood sugar all over the place—she told me all of the things wrong with her. Something will catch up with her sooner or later, no fear of that." He'd clapped his hands together, satisfied that his sister already had one foot in the grave.

Harry dragged the suitcase to the guest room, thinking that if there was any justice in the world, Aunt Marge would outlive them all. On the other hand, that would mean Marge would still be around, he thought with a shudder.

He braced himself, then in a great burst of exertion swung her suitcase up onto the bed, wishing he dared levitate it. When he had returned to the top of the stairs, still breathing heavily, Vernon was the one trying to ingratiate himself with his sister, while simultaneously insulting his wife and son. Harry didn't feel the least bit insulted, though he knew he was the real target of Vernon's barbed remarks.

"Well, isn't it nice to have a perfectly _normal_ relative come to see us for once," he said pointedly, noticing Harry at the top of the stairs. Aunt Marge's beady little eyes followed her brother's gaze and her mouth twisted unpleasantly upon seeing Harry again. He swallowed, hoping he could keep his emotions (and his accidental magic) under control.

"Your suitcase is on your bed, Aunt Marge," he informed her as he descended the stairs, though he wanted nothing more than to lock himself in his room and pretend he didn't exist. (He would have been perfectly happy to do this when the Masons had come to dinner if Dobby hadn't shown up and made it impossible.)

"I hope you didn't go poking about in it, boy," she said suspiciously, her eyes narrowing.

He gazed innocently back at her. "Of course not, Aunt Marge."

"Hmph!" she said sceptically, following her brother into the lounge. Harry closed his eyes, breathing deeply, counting backward from one-hundred to keep himself in check.

 _I will not lose my temper, I will not lose my temper_ he thought. He remained in the hall instead of following the others into the lounge.

"So," he heard Marge say when she had lowered her bulk into a chair; "how bad _were_ his marks this term?"

"Oh, you wouldn't _believe_ how bad," Uncle Vernon said after a moment's hesitation, making Harry bristle. "And I don't expect his GCSEs to be much better," he added, evidently remembering that Harry was supposed to be like any other boy his age, only more likely to end up in prison.

"In my days, they were O-Levels. How do you think you'll do, Dudders?"

"Oh, I thought it was easy," Dudley answered breezily. Harry doubted that; he anticipated that his one possible bright spot during the holiday, before going off to number twelve, Grimmauld Place, would be the arrival of Dudley's GCSE results. Harry fully expected to find that Dudley had done miserably.

After Dudley's boast, he suddenly felt like asking his cousin things like, "What's a dangling participle? What's the capital of Argentina?" even though he wasn't certain he knew these things, either, let alone whether questions of this sort were generally asked on the GCSEs. A week earlier, he'd been watching a quiz show with the rest of the family and these questions had come up. He was starting to feel like he should behave like Hermione during the summer and read up on the sort of things he would have learned if he'd gone to Muggle school. He was starting to feel a little ignorant of basic Muggle information.

His train of thought was derailed by the doorbell ringing, however, and Harry called into the lounge, "I'll get it." He knew who it would be. He swung open the door and found his aunt's best friend and partner in gossip, Yvonne Martin, standing on the mat, looking down her long nose at him.

"Oh," she said, ever the friendly one; "it's _you._ "

"Good evening, Mrs. Martin," Harry said, doing his best butler imitation.

He wondered how on earth servants put up with horrid masters who insisted upon discussing them in earshot, as though they couldn't understand English. This was what Yvonne Martin and Petunia Dursley habitually did to Harry, all the while ordering him about. It was always, " _On the roof of the school kitchens, if you please!_ " and " _Well, I never! Such cheek!_ " followed swiftly by, " _More ice for our drinks! Now!_ "

That was when he was younger. While his aunt had less ammunition now that he was away at school, instead of blunting her attacks, this seemed to challenge her to come up with just as many things to criticise, though she only saw him six weeks out of the year.

Petunia appeared in the hall to greet her best friend. "Yvonne! So glad you could make it," she said with genuine feeling, embracing her. Harry had often heard his aunt say that Yvonne was the sister she'd never had, which made Harry want to throw something. _You didn't appreciate the sister you had,_ he'd thought more than once. Now that he'd seen his mother in Snape's Pensieve, he wondered how she had refrained from hexing her sister; perhaps she _hadn't_ refrained, and that was part of why Petunia wasn't very fond of her. He liked what he'd seen of his mother and couldn't imagine her taking anything from her sister lying down.

"Come in, come in," Petunia said, looking far happier than when her sister-in-law had arrived. "You remember Vernon's sister Marge, of course? I knew how well you and Yvonne got on when you visited at Christmas two years ago, Marge, so I thought you'd appreciate having her here again," she lied, her voice dripping with obsequiousness. Harry knew Yvonne was only there to save Petunia from having to converse with Marge more than necessary.

Harry would have given anything to get out of hearing them talk about how worthless he was, so he decided to be helpful instead. "Do you want me to check on the dinner, Aunt Petunia?" he asked deferentially. She immediately looked alarmed, springing to her feet.

"Why? What are you planning to do to our food?" She hustled past him, going down the corridor to the kitchen, Yvonne close behind her. Harry followed, his exasperation threatening to overwhelm him.

"Nothing, Aunt Petunia. I just thought you'd like to relax instead of having to watch the time," he said as he entered the kitchen. His aunt was peering into the oven, eyeing the roast suspiciously, as though she expected it to start dancing a hornpipe any second. _No,_ he ordered himself. _Don't think about things like that or you might make it happen._ He had to watch it; if he got very worked up and wasn't careful about his thoughts, there was no telling what he could do accidentally. "Can't I want to be helpful without having an ulterior motive?" he asked, unable to mask the resentment in his voice.

She looked at him through narrowed eyes, her lips very thin. "No," she replied simply, leaving the kitchen again, Yvonne travelling in her wake.

He managed to make it through the hour before dinner by sitting in a corner of the lounge with his hands folded in his lap, staring into space and thinking about Quidditch fouls while the talk swarmed around his head, never really penetrating. At one point Marge barked at him, "You! Why are you sitting there with that queer look on your face? Planning something criminal, are you?"

He blinked, having been thinking about how much he'd like to commit a _Blatching_ foul on Draco Malfoy, if there weren't a virtual guarantee that Madam Hooch would catch him. _That's all that's missing here,_ he thought miserably. To round out the polar opposite of his fan club, all the lounge of number four, Privet Drive needed was to add one very anti-Potter Slytherin to the mix. Or two, if you threw in Professor Snape. The main course at dinner would no longer be roast beef but Harry-Potter's-Head-on-a-Platter.

When they were sitting around the dinner table, Harry was attempting to be as invisible as possible and largely succeeding apart from the odd remark about his messy hair, dreadful marks, skinny build or criminal tendencies. But when his aunt was dishing up the trifle they were having for pudding (giving Harry a measly spoonful of wilted fruit with no cake or cream), Marge started in on him again, forcing Harry to struggle to keep control over his emotions.

After shoving a large forkful of trifle into her mouth, resulting in a dollop of cream sitting on one of her chubby chins, she waved the empty fork in Harry's direction, saying, "Now he's almost sixteen, Vernon, you should turn him out. What's he need more schooling for? He'd never pass A-Levels, after all, let alone get into university. You've more than done your duty. A sixteen-year-old is perfectly able to support himself, if he puts his mind to it." She sniffed and scratched her nose, but she'd had some cream on her hand as well, and now another dollop adorned the end of her pudgy nose. "Of course, _most_ sixteen-year-olds would start as manual labourers, and he doesn't look like he could even lift Ripper without hurting himself." The dog barked in his direction as though he agreed with her assessment and Harry bristled again; she'd _seen_ him carry her ruddy suitcase upstairs. It had to weigh at least fifty kilos.

He tried the deep breathing once more, to stay calm. _I can get through this, I can,_ he tried to tell himself. _I won't let her get to me._

"Petunia," Yvonne suddenly said, after taking a tiny, dainty speck of cake from her fork; she was always slimming, telling his aunt about this or that plan guaranteed to take off the weight. She never looked any different to Harry, always slightly pudgier than his aunt but never what you'd call outright fat. "Didn't you tell me once that he has a godfather? Why couldn't he take him? Why _didn't_ he take him when your sister and her husband left him on your hands?"

Harry counted in his head some more; the way she'd put it, you'd think his parents had wilfully _abandoned_ him, as though they'd had any choice about it. He decided he'd had enough of this and it was time to shut up the lot of them. He saw that his uncle was about to open his mouth to answer, but Harry rushed to do it first. "Oh, he couldn't take me because he went to prison right after my parents died," he said casually, loading some fruit on his fork. "For mass murder," he added, before putting the fork in his mouth and chewing the fruit thoughtfully, gauging the reactions of the others at the table.

Complete and utter silence reigned; his aunt and uncle looked like they wanted to throttle him. Dudley was taking advantage of the general paralysis of the adults to help himself to more trifle. Harry was rather pleased by the result of his little bombshell. _This is going quite well,_ he thought. "Of course, after he escaped from prison a few years ago," he continued, "he asked me to come live with him, and I might have done, but since he's on the run from the police, that wouldn't have worked very well. Maybe you heard about him? It was all over the news that he'd escaped. Sirius Black. It was three years ago almost to the day," he added. "It's a pity I couldn't go to live with him, but he visits me at school and writes to me often enough. He and my dad were like brothers."

It was almost as if he could convince himself that Sirius was still alive by speaking about him like this. The sharp pain of losing Sirius had not dulled in the time that had elapsed since; he still had the Department of Mysteries dream every night, but slightly changed now. He was walking down the corridor, drawing nearer and nearer to the door, but when he opened it, he immediately saw Bellatrix Lestrange hexing Sirius, Sirius falling through the veil, heard his own voice screaming, " _Noooooo_..." He'd woken in a cold sweat each night while it was still dark, hoping Dudley wouldn't come into his room and ask him whether _Sirius_ was his boyfriend, as he'd done when Harry had cried out Cedric's name in his sleep the previous summer. It was difficult to fall sleep again after that, but he usually managed eventually. The interrupted sleep didn't make it any easier to get up at a "civilised" time, or at least civilised enough for his aunt.

He put another forkful of trifle in his mouth, trying again to not see the image of Sirius falling through the veil, trying not to think about it. He was _not_ going to make them happy by telling them that Sirius was dead. He didn't want to give them that satisfaction. He wasn't completely convinced that Mad-Eye Moody's threat had been enough to make them treat him well, nor even the letter from Dumbledore, so he had no problem letting them continue to think that another reason they had to treat him well was that they might otherwise be risking a murderer slitting their throats in the night. And by pretending to them that Sirius was alive, it almost made Harry feel that he was, that he could walk in the door any moment.

Marge's mouth was open wide enough that they could all see her unchewed food, a quite revolting sight. Yvonne had ceased to chew and looked like she'd bitten a lemon, her face was screwed up so painfully. Vernon Dursley's thick neck was bright red and his face was brighter red as he worked on building up a proper head of steam, ready to explode in Harry's direction.

However, Marge surprised them all, coming to herself again quite suddenly and attacking from a direction Harry hadn't anticipated. "Well," she said, sniffing, even as she continued to chew. She swallowed and went on. "That explains quite a lot, now doesn't it? Mass-murderer for a godfather. What _sort_ of godfather is he, eh? That's what I'd like to know," she said, elbowing Dudley and raising her eyebrows suggestively. Dudley, his mouth full of trifle, nodded vigorously in agreement, his jaws busily working on the enormous amount of food he'd shovelled into his maw.

Petunia was looking daggers at Harry while Yvonne started edging her chair away from him, trembling. Harry was about to say something else, but Marge went on.

"And here I'd always thought that that Potter your sister married was an unemployed lout, Petunia! Turns out he was far worse; if this Black was like a brother to him, very likely he was living a life of crime as well, and we can all see that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree," she opined, gesturing at Harry with her fork. "No doubt it was some rival drug lord who killed them. Probably started poaching on his territory. Dreadful! No thought at all for his wife's poor relatives who would have to clean up his mess by raising his delinquent child, not that your sister must have cared at all for the law either, marrying a gangster as she did."

Despite his best efforts, Harry was feeling the negative emotions welling up in side of him and was afraid that they would soon break free if he didn't manage to calm himself. _Oh, so now my dad's a gangster?_ he thought angrily, though he'd tried to cultivate this view of Sirius to unnerve everyone present.

"And you say that he _visits you at school_?" Yvonne finally choked out, staring at Harry as though he would take out a gun at any moment and murder her in cold blood. "Petunia!" she said fearfully. "He's—he's in contact with a _fugitive_! And he hasn't told the police!"

Now his aunt and uncle were looking angrier with him than he'd ever seen, even after the Weasleys had destroyed the lounge in order to travel by Floo. But Marge still wasn't done.

"Of course, it might have been someone in his own organisation who killed Potter and your sister," Marge said to a very stiff, tight-lipped Petunia Dursley, as though she were very well-versed concerning the ins and outs of organised crime.

 _Suddenly my dad's not just a gangster but a criminal overlord,_ Harry thought crossly.

"He probably double-crossed one of his own thugs, who wanted to pay him back. That's very likely how it was done—inside job. No honor among thieves, you know," Aunt Marge said, not noticing that Dudley was now trading his empty bowl for her still-heaping serving of trifle; once it was before him, he dove in with abandon.

Harry had never seen his aunt and uncle so livid, but he was feeling a fair bit of anger himself, and he knew that this was bad, very bad. He couldn't risk staying in the room with Aunt Marge any longer; she had a knack for saying just the thing that would send him over the edge, and he was amazed that he'd managed to control his temper as long as he had. So he knew that he had to push further, to get his aunt and uncle to do the only thing that would save them all from a dose of his accidental magic.

He stood and forced his face into a frown, glaring across the table at Marge. "If you don't watch your mouth," he said to her through gritted teeth, hoping he sounded tougher than he felt, "I'll get my godfather to come here and teach you a lesson you'll never forget, you fat, hairy old cow." Everyone at the table gasped, except for Dudley, who was now busy polishing off Yvonne's forgotten trifle. Harry was torn between hoping that his words would turn Marge into an _actual_ fat, hairy old cow and hoping that they wouldn't.

Aunt Petunia's hand was on her chest and she was the colour of curdled milk; Uncle Vernon, on the other hand, could have passed for a beetroot, struggling to his feet and pointing at Harry with a shaking finger. "You will go to your room, you piece of filth, and see if you get to come out of it before the end of the summer! I will not stand for my sister to be spoken to that way by the likes of _you_!"

Aunt Marge fanned herself with her hand. "Honestly, Vernon! I don't know why you don't chuck him out on his ear tonight, his age be damned! Let that fugitive take care of him! With any luck the police will put them _both_ where they belong!"

Uncle Vernon looked uncomfortable and put his finger in his collar as though it was too tight. (His fleshy neck _was_ spilling over it.) "Er, Marge, as tempting as that is, you know how the police are about that sort of thing. He's our responsibility for a little while longer."

"And I don't know why you're so upset about my calling her a _fat, old cow_ ," he said to his uncle, feeling a very pleasurable sense of power. "It's nothing you haven't said yourself when discussing what you'll do with her money when the 'old girl kicks it,' as Dudley is so fond of saying." Dudley looked up in alarm, his mouth full of trifle and cream all around his busy mouth. "I don't know what's more disgusting; the way you kiss up to her or the way you turn around and talk as though she's already six feet under."

If Harry had thought that lies would be effective—such as Sirius still being alive and a mass-murderer—it was nothing to the effect that the _truth_ had on everyone present. "Let me see if I remember— 'High cholesterol, clogged arteries,' something like that. 'Something will catch up with her,' I think you said, Uncle Vernon." He turned back to Marge. "And whatever you do, Aunt Marge, don't leave your clothes to Aunt Petunia. She hates all of your stuff and will just burn it."

As her brother and sister-in-law spluttered and tried to make excuses for why Harry would say such hateful things (" _Mentally ill! Always has been! Trying to get his treatment paid for, but you know the government_ …"), he strode out of the dining room, while his uncle bellowed, _"_ _I meant what I said! You are in that room for the rest of the holiday!_ "

"Yeah, yeah," Harry said carelessly, glad that he was out of there before anything _happened_. He didn't know how he was going to stand a fortnight of Marge, especially now that he'd told the deep, dark family secret that they really couldn't stand her. ( _Would she want to stay after all?_ he wondered. He thought he'd seen a flicker of belief in her eyes when he'd told her the truth about what her family thought of her.)

He closed his door and threw himself onto his bed, the springs complaining beneath him. Despite the fact that he was still quite thin, he'd grown some during his fifth year, and was coming very close to having his feet hanging off the end of the mattress unless he had the top of his head right up against the headboard. He rose and paced the room restlessly, wishing he had Hedwig to talk to or to send off with a letter to Ron or Hermione about the rubbish he'd been dealing with. Instead he was stuck in a house with four people—five, tonight—who all hated him and made him want to do dreadful things, which he couldn't afford to do if he was going to avoid breaking wizarding law. Dumbledore was right about that: he hadn't enjoyed going before the Wizengamot the previous summer and did _not_ want to repeat it.

He thought for a moment of going into Dudley's room and having at the punching bag his aunt and uncle had given his cousin for Christmas. He'd brought it home from his Smeltings dormitory for the summer in order to continue to stay in practise. When Harry saw it for the first time, he stopped short; Dudley had drawn on it with permanent ink. The top of the punching bag was adorned with a crude cartoon of Harry. There was a lopsided oval for the head, spiky black hair, glasses that looked like they'd been sat on by Dudley himself, and a jagged scar traversing Harry's cartoonish forehead, a far larger scar than he really had. He'd also drawn Harry's mouth with most of the teeth missing, as though Dudley had already knocked them out himself.

Harry had stared and stared at the bag that first time, at the insulting caricature, the missing teeth, the exaggerated scar, the wild hair, wondering what he could do to Dudley to get back at him. But suddenly, getting back at Dudley had seemed like the least important thing in the world. He stared at the drawing, looking into the eyes of the cartoon Harry, feeling a hatred well up in him such as he had never known, a greater hatred than he had felt when he failed to curse Bellatrix Lestrange.

He began punching the bag repeatedly, harder and harder, until his scrawny arms seemed like they would ache for a year. He hit his own image in the face over and over, his eyes streaming, grunting with the effort. " _It's all your fault,_ " he had gasped between blows. " _You killed him. You. You murdered him. He'd be alive if it weren't for you. So would they. Mum and dad would be alive if it weren't for you, if you weren't in that damn prophecy…_ "

Dudley had been out with his gang at the time and his aunt and uncle evidently forgot, thinking that the sound of blows raining on the punching bag was due to Dudley getting in some practise. Harry had collapsed afterward, not quite finding the catharsis he sought. However, he also knew that he couldn't possibly tell his relatives that Sirius had died. _It was my fault, just like with my parents. Just like with Cedric._ He couldn't get these thoughts out of his head, awake or asleep.

 _I need to get out of this house, at least for a little while,_ he thought, still pacing his room. He felt that it was not the time for another confrontation with his cartoon self on Dudley's punching bag. There were enough people who _weren't_ him attacking him; he didn't need to help them. He knew how Sirius had felt, cooped up in number twelve, Grimmauld Place, forced to listen to his mother's screaming portrait and the vile mutterings of his evil house elf. Harry could still hear his uncle raving at the top of his lungs, and Marge, as well, producing a steady, even stream of opinions about criminals, and Sirius in particular, saying, " _What sort of godfather_ _is_ _he, that's what I'd like to know, eh? I've seen those American films. I know how the criminal mind works…_ " Their voices formed a macabre duet.

Harry tried to shut them out by putting his fingers in his ears, but it was no good. At length his eyes landed on his trunk and he wondered whether there was any way he could possibly avoid getting in trouble if he cast a deafening charm on himself to avoid doing any _other_ magic _accidentally_. But when he opened his trunk to look for a spellbook, the first thing he saw was his Invisibility Cloak. He picked it up, feeling the silvery folds slide through his fingers.

 _That's it!_ he thought. _I'll do the same thing I do at Hogwarts—I'll sneak out using the Cloak!_ He thought about where he would go; just hanging about in the park didn't hold much appeal. Plus, he didn't know that Voldemort wouldn't decide to send Dementors after him, and the park was now known to be a place that he frequented. (He was not completely convinced that Dolores Umbridge wasn't in the service of Voldemort.)

 _Is the park protected the same way that Privet Drive is?_ he wondered. Perhaps the Dementors had been able to attack the previous summer because they weren't affected by the ancient magic that Dumbledore had invoked to protect him. At any rate, Harry didn't want to leave the house to wander about alone. He missed _people_ , normal people who would speak to him as though he _wasn't_ about to kill them or steal everything they owned. It would be nice to actually _talk_ to someone instead of screaming at them or being screamed at, to remind himself that there were humans in the world who could hold a conversation without insulting everyone he held dear.

There was only one possible catch: the guard outside his house. Initially unaware that anyone was watching his house the previous summer, since returning from Hogwarts a fortnight earlier he'd grown adept at determining the identity of each person who was charged with guarding the outside of number four, Privet Drive. Despite his best efforts, Moody's wooden leg made a little _thunking_ sound when he was pacing back and forth under _his_ Invisibility Cloak. Harry would need to listen for that sound before leaving the house. If Moody was on duty, there was nothing to be done; once he looked through Harry's Invisibility Cloak with his magic eye, that would be that.

Tonks also usually gave herself away by her clumsiness; she was always falling into the shrubbery. He hadn't realized that was what was going on the previous summer when a strange squeak would come from the front of the house and the shrubbery started swaying about like mad, even without any wind. This year he'd worked it out on his third day back in Surrey. But even without that, Tonks wouldn't have been a problem, as she wouldn't be able to detect Harry. Neither would Shacklebolt or—especially—the addle-brained Mundungus Fletcher.

The other potential problem was Snape.

Now that he'd tried learning Occlumency with Snape, he realized that the times Snape seemed to have been aware of his presence, despite his use of the Cloak, was due to his having felt Harry's _mind's_ presence. Even now, Harry had to hope that if Snape was lurking outside his house (the very thought gave him a shiver), he hadn't picked up on the thoughts Harry was having about getting away for the evening. Unlike the other guards, Snape was silent as mist and completely undetectable. Harry didn't like to think about his lurking outside the house; he normally preferred to think of Snape being confined to Hogwarts, though he knew better, since Snape had come to Grimmauld Place more than once to give a report to the Order the previous summer. To think of him being in Surrey was highly disturbing.

He went to the window and opened it, surveying the front of the house critically. In the still summer twilight he saw the shrubbery near the pavement start vibrating quickly, despite there being no wind. He sighed in relief. _Tonks._

He returned to his trunk and dug farther down, finding his money bag. He'd spent all of the wizarding money he'd had in it, but upon arriving in Surrey for the holiday, he'd written to Mrs Weasley, asking her to withdraw some gold from his vault and convert it to Muggle money, so he'd have some spending money during the summer, before coming to London. It wasn't much, only thirty quid, plus a fifty pence piece from his desk drawer. But it would be more than enough for him to get a bus to the next village and have a Coke at the pub, maybe some crisps, too. Now that he was taller, he could probably pass for eighteen, he reckoned. (He also wasn't planning to try to buy alcohol, which he felt would only draw unwanted attention.) It might be enough money for him to sneak out many nights before his birthday, if he resisted the urge to buy more expensive food or splurge on other items. (Suddenly he was itching to go to the cinema; that would eat up his money too quickly, though, so he tried to put it out of his mind.)

After checking on his wand, he stuffed the six five-pound notes and fifty-pence piece into the pockets of his jeans, put his rucksack on his shoulder (so he could use it to carry the Cloak), and threw the Invisibility Cloak over his head. _It's the only way,_ he thought, justifying it to himself. _One more minute in this house and they'll be having to deflate Marge again._ He'd been let off when he was twelve, and it was a miracle that he hadn't been expelled the previous summer. He needed to be inconspicuous for his own safety. Performing accidental magic because of things that his tactless aunt was saying to him would just make him look like a troublemaker. It would basically confirm everything Severus Snape had always said was wrong with him, from his arrogance to his disregard for rules, and _especially_ a disregard for people bending over backward to protect him (like Snape himself). _If I wanted the likes of you protecting me, I'd have asked,_ he thought crossly as he crept down the upstairs hall, covered by the Cloak. But he hadn't asked; Dumbledore had. That was enough for Snape, and was supposed to be enough for Harry, too.

He reached the foot of the stairs without anyone noticing him; he could still hear his uncle's voice telling his sister how unbalanced Harry was, while his aunt was complimenting Marge's clothes yet _again_ , trying to convince her that _of course_ Harry was lying and trying to be hurtful and she'd always _adored_ Marge's taste.

At the bottom of the stairs, however, sitting on the mat, blocking his way to the door, was Ripper. Harry swore under his breath; the dog was sniffing the air and looking about suspiciously. He knew something was wrong, that someone was present he couldn't see, and he looked highly disturbed about this, a low growl emanating from his throat. However, a second later, Ripper's ears perked up, his nose went into overdrive, and he bolted for the dining room, tongue out eagerly. When Harry crept to the door of the room, he saw that Yvonne, in the midst of the controversy over Harry's conduct, had discreetly dropped some roast beef beside her chair, probably so Petunia wouldn't notice that she hadn't eaten it. Ripper was on the roast beef in a trice, and Harry silently thanked Yvonne for her vanity. He opened the front door very quietly (not that anyone in the dining room could hear anything) and stepped out of number four, Privet Drive, into the still, humid air.

 _He was free._

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	2. Ancient Magic

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 **Chapter Two**

 **Ancient Magic**

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Harry crept down the front walk of number four, Privet Drive and hoped that Tonks wasn't standing just where he needed to go; after a moment's hesitation, he saw the bushes moving frantically again, and he bolted for the pavement, running across Privet Drive as fast and as lightly as he could to reduce the possibility that he might collide with the clumsy young Auror. He tried to slow his breathing so that he wouldn't be heard.

After a minute of panic, he calmed sufficiently to begin walking cautiously. With each step he came closer to a Dursley-free evening, but he tried not to be distracted by fantasising about this. He needed to pay close attention to everything around him, so he wouldn't walk into someone or trip over a stray cat. (None of Mrs Figg's cats seemed to be around at the moment, luckily.) He wasn't technically breaking wizarding law, as his use of the Cloak didn't constitute doing magic, but he also thought it possible that Dumbledore would take a very dim view of his little outing.

 _He's never tried to spend fourteen seconds with Marge Dursley, let alone fourteen days,_ Harry thought crossly.

He had soon reached the edge of the suburb of Little Whinging and continued into the larger adjacent town of Greater Whinging, where he could get the bus. It was a depressing place, in Harry's opinion, overshadowed as it was by the hulking Grunnings drill factory. The blocky building dominated the High Street, casting a shadow over many of the small, struggling businesses on the other side of the road. A number of shops had been torn down decades ago when Mr Grunnings had built his horrid, depressing factory. In stark contrast to the rest of prosperous Surrey, this had also led to a downturn in the general atmosphere of Greater Whinging, so that it was now largely a place for factory workers and their families to live in rundown old houses that were chopped up into cheap flats. In the local newspaper politicians were always saying how concerned they were about "the Greater Whinging problem," which was code for violent crime, drug dealing and unemployment. (Vernon Dursley took great pleasure in sacking people whenever the fortunes of the factory took even a temporary downturn.)

Harry shook his head, walking furtively in the shadow of the factory, making sure his Invisibility Cloak didn't slip. He didn't dare try to go to a pub here; everyone would know who he was. His exploits at the school had been far too publicised when he was young for him to blend in anonymously, and now everyone was told that he attended St Brutus's, which meant that his toughness was expected to be on a par with the other rather tough denizens of Greater Whinging.

He made his way to the bus stop so that he could go to New Stokington. He didn't know when the next bus was expected, so he leaned against a pole, trying to remember how much it would cost. Then it hit him: he couldn't pay for the bus. In fact, unless someone else showed up or he took off his Cloak, the bus driver very likely wouldn't even stop to let him board. The driver wouldn't _see_ anyone to _let_ on. _Maybe someone will get off here,_ he thought hopefully, though this was also a depressing thought (for the other person).

At length two teenagers came down the High Street, arms looped around each other's shoulders so there was no space to be seen between them. The boy looked very familiar and Harry realised, when he drew near enough, that he was Gordon, one of Dudley's friends, part of his gang. Harry had forgotten that Gordon lived in Greater Whinging, unlike Piers and Malcolm. Dudley wouldn't even have met Gordon, Harry knew, if his aunt and uncle hadn't been trying to save money by sending Dudley (and, of course, Harry) to the Greater Whinging primary school before shipping him off to Smeltings. Few other residents of Little Whinging—largely bankers, lawyers and self-employed business owners—would send their children anywhere near Greater Whinging; most of the other children with whom Harry and Dudley had gone to school had parents who worked at the factory, and that was likely to be their future as well.

Evidently, Gordon had a _girlfriend,_ which was the last thing Harry expected. He recognised her as well, from his primary school days. Her pug-like face reminded him of Pansy Parkinson. She had too much dark makeup around her eyes, long, greasy-looking dark hair and rather a lot of spots on her face. Gordon was liberally decorated with spots as well, and he needed a shave. Both of them wore large black clunky boots, T-shirts and black jeans that had been artfully ripped and stained, which was not how Gordon usually dressed when he was with Dudley and the gang. Harry thought the girl might have a stud in her tongue, and he could see her belly-button ring, as her torn shirt ended several inches above it. Gordon was sporting a black leather bracelet with rather long spikes protruding from it; Harry _did_ remember seeing him wear this when he was hanging about with Dudley in the play park in Little Whinging, looking for little kids to beat up. (Harry assumed that if they had hung about in any parks in Greater Whinging—if they existed— _they_ would be the ones getting beaten up.)

As they stumbled to the bus stop, their eyes a bit glazed-over, Gordon pushed the girl up against one of the walls of the shelter, immediately shoving his tongue into her open mouth. The girl pulled him to her enthusiastically, making loud sucking noises, while Harry grimaced and turned away from them, reminded distastefully of his date with Cho, when he'd had to hear Roger Davies slurping over his girlfriend for what seemed an eternity. He hadn't _minded_ kissing Cho himself, apart from the crying, and apart from wondering (later, when Ron brought it up) whether she was crying because he was so very _bad_ at it, but listening to other people doing it so noisily struck him as particularly disgusting. When he was no longer looking at them, he was aware of a sweet, cloying smell that hadn't been there before they'd arrived.

The pair of them finally came up for air and Harry heard Gordon say, "Trust me, Chloe. We'll just get the bus to Harrington. My friend Clive runs the pub there. He'll let us use one of the rooms. He owes me. Safe as houses. Your mum and dad will never find out."

"Mmm, brilliant," Chloe purred; Harry turned to look at them again as she opened her mouth and stuck her tongue (she _definitely_ had a stud in it) between Gordon's lips. The moonlight was picking out her acne so that her face had a truly disturbing appearance, as though she had suppurating sores, and Harry turned away again, feeling like he was going to spew. _Chloe Johnston_. He remembered her name now. She had been just as bad as the other children when it came to siding with Dudley. No one had ever stood up to Dudley with him, not once. Only a teacher would occasionally step in, and that was only if he didn't perform some accidental magic first, which tended to unnerve them, understandably. He remembered a thin, pale girl with long dark plaits and watery blue eyes cheering on Dudley and his friends when they were chasing him round the schoolyard.

 _So, they're sneaking off to the pub in Harrington to shag,_ he thought, but then the idea of the pair of _them_ doing _that_ introduced a _very_ unpleasant image into his mind, and he tried to clear his head by thinking of something else, anything else. _Professor Binns,_ he thought desperately. _Ron vomiting slugs. Blast-Ended Skrewts. Drinking Polyjuice Potion. Thestrals._

 _Thestrals_. What he wouldn't give for a Thestral right now, to be able to fly off on an invisible steed, anywhere he wanted.

But just as he had this thought, the bus turned the corner onto the High Street, speeding toward them alarmingly fast. Harry hoped the driver would notice Gordon and Chloe, suddenly grateful for their presence. He didn't see passengers standing on the bus, so it didn't appear that anyone was disembarking in Greater Whinging. If it weren't for Gordon and his girlfriend, the bus wouldn't have stopped at all. He was suddenly quite glad of their randiness and tried again not to think about what they would be doing at the pub in Harrington. _I just hope they don't have kids,_ he thought with a shudder, wondering whether it would occur to Gordon to take precautions against this. _A combination of Gordon and Chloe. How horrid._

The bus came to a halt in front of them and the driver slowly opened the door; to Harry's surprise, it was a young woman with frowsy yellow hair, not much older than he was, it seemed. He remembered his initial surprise when he'd met Stan Shunpike, who, he realised, might have left Hogwarts after his O.W.L.s, which would account both for his youth when Harry met him and the impression he'd given of doing his job for a while. _Will that be me?_ he wondered. _Will I do well enough on my O.W.L.s to stay on? Or will I have to get a job as a conductor on the Knight Bus, or the Hogwarts Express?_

Suddenly, his uncle's prediction of doom and gloom for his exam results—even though his uncle had been talking about the GCSEs—seemed far more of a sure thing than any prophecy or prediction Professor Trelawney had ever made. _I'll bet my exams were incredibly funny down at the Ministry,_ he thought. _Provided everyone with a jolly good laugh, no doubt._ He no longer felt optimistic even about his Defence Against the Dark Arts marks.

Gordon and Chloe entered the bus slowly and Harry panicked, seeing how impatient the driver looked. What if she shut the door too quickly and he couldn't get on? Harry pressed his shoulder to the door, trying not to make any noise. Chloe and Gordon were still ascending the steps onto the bus and he wrinkled his nose, not having been this close to them before. He could identify the sweetish smell clinging to their clothes now: they'd been smoking weed. Around twilight, there were areas of the Little Whinging play park that absolutely reeked of it. _Hmph,_ he thought. _My family is supposed to be a gang of drug lords and it's Dudley's friends who are actually smoking weed._

Once Chloe was on the bus completely, the driver tried to close the door, as Harry had feared. Chloe was too close to him to allow him to step into the bus yet. _Damn damn damn_! he thought. _Move your skinny arse_! he silently ordered her. He felt the bus move and he leaned into it, pressing his shoulder to the door as hard as he could and grasping the edge with his fingers, through the Cloak. It was enough; the door looked for all the world like it was stuck and wouldn't close.

"Come on, you," the driver said to Chloe and Gordon. "Get out of the way. I can't close the bleedin' door."

"I'm not _in_ the way of your bleedin' door," Chloe informed the woman, adding, "stupid cow," and swaying a little where she stood on the step.

"Well, why won't it close, then?" the driver responded belligerently.

 _Move move move_ , Harry thought desperately. He did _not_ want to return home, or just wander about the play park in his Cloak until he felt like going to bed. Now that he was _here_ , at the bus stop, he was determined to go through with his plan. He was going to a bloody pub and have a Coke and some crisps and watch the telly. Nothing was going to stop him; suddenly it was very, very important that he be able to do this. He'd suffered enough defeats in the last year; he was damned if he was going to let two high-as-a-kite prats, a bus driver and a bus door do him out of a small bit of escapism.

Chloe stepped up next to the driver, finally allowing Harry to climb onto the bus; Chloe pointed at the door, her finger almost touching Harry's nose through the Cloak, saying, "Look! I'm nowhere near your bloody door, so close it now!"

The driver did, with no problem at all. Harry tugged at his Cloak a little, to make sure it wasn't stuck in the door, but he'd managed to get clear in time. As the bus lurched forward (the driver slammed her foot down on the accelerator rather suddenly, obviously still quite irked), Harry was reminded again of the Knight Bus, and was glad that on _this_ bus he could at least count on the seats being firmly attached to the floor.

He waited while Gordon and Chloe made their unsteady way down the aisle, past the mere half-dozen or so other passengers on this muggy summer evening. He didn't recognise any of the other people, and fortunately, there were enough seats for him to avoid being near anyone else. He chose one about halfway back, near an open window. Gordon and Chloe were in the very back of the bus, resuming their snogging. Harry was, unfortunately, forced to witness this activity again before he sat.

 _At least it's not that little rat-faced Piers Polkiss,_ he thought, remembering Piers's onion breath in his ear when he had held Harry's arms behind him many times, while Dudley attacked. He hadn't allowed himself to get into a situation like that with Dudley since finding out that he was a wizard, but Harry would still never forget Piers doing this. The thing that had really stung was that Piers was new to the neighbourhood when Harry was nine years old and had, at first, seemed like he might be interested in being Harry's friend. He _had_ pretended to be Harry's friend, for a little while. Worse than the beating that Dudley had given him when the truth came out was the realisation that Piers had betrayed him, that he'd been planning all along to make Harry think he had a friend and then reveal that he was really in league with Dudley.

Harry was glad when he was able to face away from Gordon and Chloe, feeling the breeze from the open window through his Cloak, speeding toward temporary freedom. Now he just had to hope that someone was getting off in New Stokington. Well, he reasoned, if no one does, I could get off in the village after that. He couldn't remember the name of it, but he reckoned that _someone_ had to be getting off in the next couple of villages after Harrington.

When they finally reached Gordon and Chloe's destination, Harry heaved a sigh of relief. As the bus pulled away from them, a very elderly woman sitting near the driver leaned forward and said, "What stop was that, dearie?"

"Harrington, ma'am."

"So New Stokington is next?"

"Yes, ma'am. Is that where you're going?"

"Yes, yes it is," the old woman beamed. Her white hair was like a halo around her head and when she smiled at the driver her face crinkled into a network of wrinkles that was nonetheless more cheerful than aging. Sometimes when Harry saw an old woman like her, he imagined that she could be one of his grandmothers. He'd searched the photo album Hagrid had given him, looking for but not finding anyone in the photos from his parents' wedding who looked like they could be his parents' parents. But then, Hagrid had asked people for pictures of _his_ parents, not theirs.

He smiled at the old woman, though she didn't know he was smiling at her. _I have a way to get off the bus in New Stokington,_ he thought, beaming invisibly at her even more. _Thank you for that._

They finally turned onto New Stokington High Street and came to a halt at the bus stop. Harry scuttled carefully down the aisle so that he was ahead of the old woman and ready to leap out the door first. Sure enough, as he'd expected, the driver opened the bus door when the old woman was still at the top of the steps; Harry leaped out quickly while she made her cautious way toward the pavement, holding tightly to the rail. She turned around when she'd reached the pavement.

"Thank you, young lady," she said with another wrinkly smile. The driver smiled and nodded at her before closing the door and speeding down the High Street, going to the next village.

Harry looked around, his heart thumping quickly, wondering what to do now. He looked up and down the High Street, finally spying a large sign hanging over the pavement: an enormous bull's head was painted on a sign hanging on noisy chains that creaked as the breeze made the sign sway. The bull's horns were picked out in gold, and in gold letters around the bottom of the sign it read _The Bartered Bull_.

For no reason he could name, he liked the sound of it. He looked carefully about, ducked into a dark doorway several shops away from the pub, surreptitiously pulled off his cloak and folded it neatly, placing it in his rucksack. He also touched the handle of his wand, stuck into the waistband of his jeans as usual; he liked knowing it was there and he fussed with his shirt for a moment, making certain that it hid the wand.

Adjusting the strap of the bag on his shoulder, he stepped out of the shadows and began ambling toward the pub, whistling jauntily and feeling generally quite pleased with himself. _If I can get into Hogsmeade without Dementors finding out, surely I can get out of the house to spend time with normal people._

But at the thought of Dementors, Harry shivered for a moment, remembering that the Dementors had left Azkaban and were no longer working for the Ministry. He also remembered Malfoy saying that his dad and the others would be out of the prison in no time. Looking furtively around the seemingly-deserted High Street, Harry sped up, sweating uncomfortably, and finally stood before the dark wood door of the pub. With a deep breath, he pulled it open and stepped into its dim interior.

He found a pub that could have existed anywhere in Britain. Dark panelling lined the walls, a rowdy gang was playing darts in the rear, and a slightly tarty-looking barmaid was polishing a glass behind the ancient-looking counter. The patrons who weren't playing darts looked as though they hadn't moved from their seats in about thirty years and would probably need those seats surgically removed if it ever occurred to them to do so. The television hanging over the far end of the bar showed a football match and Harry grinned, striding toward the bar, watching the ref give a very irate player a yellow card. It wasn't clear to him what clubs were playing, but the yellow-card-coach wasn't happy, and Harry wondered whether the player would get a red card if the coach irritated the referee enough.

Still watching the television, Harry sat on a vacant stool at the bar and started to take off his rucksack, but the barmaid quickly approached him and announced, "Sorry. That stool's taken."

Harry was jolted and looked at her in surprise. She looked nearly fifty but deep in denial about this. Her worn face drooped a bit at the edges, as though made of candle wax that was melting, and the makeup she'd applied to attempt to disguise the drooping simply made her look vaguely clown-like, but not in a good way; it was more like the evil clowns who occasionally popped up in horror films, with disturbingly constant grins and bloody butcher knives. Her clearly artificial blonde hair stood out from her head in a bushy halo, heightening the clownish effect. With some difficulty, as he'd never seen anyone who made him feel less like smiling, he turned up the edges of his mouth.

"Er, sorry. Is here all right?" he said, patting the stool next to him.

She crossed her arms. "No, 'fraid not. Those are for Gary and Bruce. _No one_ sits in Gary and Bruce's places."

Harry looked around, prepared to be told that _all_ of the unclaimed seating, every table and bench, was in fact traditionally used by other specific people in the community, making it impossible for a stranger to be served (or at least to sit while drinking and eating). "Erm, where can I sit without taking someone else's place?"

"Down here," the barmaid told him, to his relief, strolling to the end of the bar with the television; he'd half expected her to show him the door. "Most people think it's too close to the telly. Hope you don't mind. It's just that—"

"I understand," Harry said quickly. He'd already drawn more attention to himself than he'd intended to and sat quickly on the approved stool. The barmaid had switched the television to a sports chat show. The host was interviewing a Belgian footballer who didn't speak very much English and kept replying in Belgian before attempting pidgin English.

 _Belgian_ , Harry thought a moment later. _That doesn't sound right. Is there a language called that? Or is it called something else?_ He thought of the GCSEs again, feeling very stupid.

"Well?" the barmaid said, one carefully pencilled-on eyebrow raised expectantly.

"What?" Harry said, blinking at her.

"I said, are you going to sit there gawping into space or order something? We don't let folks come in here just to watch the telly, I'm afraid."

"Oh, sorry. Distracted. Uh, I'd just like a Coke. Oh, and some crisps, if you have them."

She made a face. "One Coke," she sneered. "And _crisps._ My, such a big spender we are," she added. Without any indication that she was interested in getting the Coke or the crisps, she squinted at him suspiciously. "How old _are_ you, anyway?"

Harry swallowed. "Eighteen," he said in as deep a voice as he could muster. Unfortunately, it sounded utterly different to how he'd just been speaking and he gave the barmaid a feeble smile, hoping fervently that she wouldn't ask him to prove his age and then kick him out.

"Uh huh," she said sceptically, her facial expression not changing. However, she did get his Coke, putting it on the bar in front of him wordlessly and then getting a packet of crisps for him.

Harry grimaced, turning back to the television, enormously grateful that she hadn't turned him out, since he doubted that she actually believed he was eighteen. _So much for talking to people who don't dislike me,_ he thought. No one else in the pub paid attention to him or looked inclined to include a stranger in their conversations. Everyone present seemed to have all the friends they needed, and Harry didn't think the barmaid would talk to him if she didn't absolutely have to. Plus he had to worry about saying something that gave away his true age if anyone _did_ engage him in conversation. _Oh, well. At least I can watch the telly and be well away from Marge._

He sipped his Coke and ripped open the packet of crisps, staring at the small screen almost directly above his head and very quickly getting a stiff neck from doing this. The six stools to his left remained vacant and he began to wonder whether the barmaid was having him on when she told him that he had to sit right under the television.

He was just about to ask whether he could move over when the door of the pub opened and a boisterous crowd entered. A number of men in football jerseys strode in, swearing colourfully at each other, but grinning good-naturedly. The crowd made its confused way toward the bar and Harry was glad of his stool then, clinging resolutely to it. He tilted his head back to watch the chat show host struggle with his guest, pretending not to notice the newcomers.

"Right, Sadie, love," a burly, dark-haired, broad-shouldered man of about thirty said, leaning over the bar to pat her rump. "I'm taking care of the lads tonight," he informed her, slapping what looked like a couple of hundred pounds on the damp, beer-smelling wood surface. Harry's eyes widened, as did Sadie's.

"Bloody hell, Gary. How much did you have on the match?"

"I bet Lockley that we'd not only beat his mates, but that if we did it by worse than three-to-one, he'd double the bet." When he grinned he showed that he was missing one of his upper front teeth. Harry had never seen anyone quite so muscular in person. His face was a bit frightening, with the missing tooth and a nose that appeared to have been broken and badly healed at some time in the past. He also bore numerous scratches on his cheeks and forehead; the skin around his left eye appeared to be darkening as well and he kept blinking that eye, as though he had a nervous tick.

"So he clocked you, did he?"

Gary touched the skin around his left eye tentatively, wincing. "Yeah, so? He still paid. He knew he had to. If he didn't—we wouldn't let him forget that in a hurry. _Would we lads?_ " he added, his voice going up as he turned to face his mates. They yelled wild and untamed approval, making Harry wonder whether they were really human or had only recently evolved from cavemen. They were all liberally decorated with clods of dirt (and blood); more than a few also had missing teeth and scratched and bruised faces; and not one, it seemed, failed to register his approval for Gary at the top of his lungs or by slapping him on the back.

Harry continued to watch the television while also watching the footballers out of the corner of his eye, should he need to duck to avoid chairs being thrown. Somehow, the presence of Gary and his mates made Harry think that a pub-brawl might be imminent, and he didn't want to be caught unawares. His Coke wasn't as good as he remembered (he thought longingly of Madam Rosmerta's butterbeer) and the crisps were a bit wilted and stale. Altogether, he was starting to feel that this outing wasn't such a good idea after all. _The grass is always greener, isn't it?_ he thought, wishing he'd simply rambled around the play park in Little Whinging. His neck was aching from the way he had to watch the telly, the food and drink weren't very good, and he was sharing the bar with a most dangerous-looking collection of men. _I have all the bloody luck._

Just as he was thinking this, Gary himself came up to him and abruptly slapped him on the back, practically making Harry go head-first into his Coke. Harry was strongly reminded of Hagrid. "Hello, mate! Haven't see you in the old Balls-of-the-Bull before."

"That's _Bartered_ Bull, Gary! You stop that!" the barmaid complained.

Gary gave her a broad tooth-deficient grin. "Just joking, Sadie, just joking." He turned back to Harry. "So—you got a name?"

"Harry Potter," he said without thinking. _Damn! Why did I say that?_ He'd meant to use his usual alias: Neville Longbottom. Then he remembered that, like him, Neville was thought to be someone who might have fulfilled the prophecy Trelawney had made about Voldemort…

"Harry Potter? Well, Harry, what position do you play?"

Harry frowned. "Uh, you mean football? I don't really play. We don't—I mean, didn't—do football at my school."

Gary looked shocked. "Don't play? _Don't play_? That's—that's just not _on_ , is it lads?" he shouted to his friends, who raised their glasses of ale and roared in agreement, though it wasn't clear to Harry that any of them knew what they were agreeing to.

Harry watched them, taking a sip of his Coke, which was having trouble getting past the lump in his throat. Something about this situation was suddenly saying to him _Danger, danger, danger._ He was now longing for the time when the footballers hadn't yet entered the pub and no one was willing to speak to him.

"So, Harry," Gary said, his broad hand on Harry's shoulder; "where you from? Not around here, I know." He shook his head, muttering, " _What sort of proper school doesn't have football, that's what I'd like to know…"_

Harry swallowed. "No, not from around here."

"Where then?" Gary pressed, making Harry feel more than a little suspicious. _I will not tell him that I'm from Little Whinging. Something about this doesn't feel right._

"London," he said suddenly. "Do you—do you know Grimmauld Place?"

Gary grimaced. "Nah. My uncle probably would, though. He's got 'the Knowledge,' if you know what I mean," he answered, putting his finger aside his nose as though it were some sort of secret signal that he and Harry had agreed had a particular meaning.

Harry panicked for a second. _The Knowledge?_ Did that mean his uncle knew about _magic_? "Erm, 'the Knowledge?'" Harry asked uncertainly, as though he didn't know about magic at all.

"Yeah, you know, what taxi-drivers have to know to get around those bloody London streets. Get lost if they didn't. _That'd_ be useful. They have to take a ruddy difficult test and all."

Harry laughed with relief. "Oh, right. Of course. Yeah, that's where I live, all right. Grimmauld Place. Home sweet home." He forced another laugh.

Gary laughed with him and slapped him on the back once more. Harry hoped very, very sincerely that Gary would soon leave him alone. Even though he'd hardly been in the pub for any time at all, Harry had an extremely strong urge to leave. However, having mentioned Grimmauld Place, he found himself suddenly thinking quite longingly of it. _That's really my home,_ he thought. _Not Privet Drive._

"Home sweet home!" Gary crowed, throwing his arm around Harry's shoulder. "Love it, just love it, I do. Sadie!" he called to her, even though she wasn't three feet away. "Another whatever for my friend Harry Potter here from Grimmauld Place in London. I'm buying. And whatever he wants to eat, as well." He glanced at Harry's crisps. "I wouldn't recommend eating those," he said in an undertone as Sadie went to get Harry another Coke. "Been trying to get rid of those for seven years, she has. Ask for a bacon sarnie instead, mate."

Harry grimaced, thinking of his money situation. "I would, but I need to make my money last for a while—"

"Nah, that's on me, too!" he said, draining his glass and then slamming it down on the bar so loudly that it rang. "Another one, love, and quickly. And get Harry here a bacon sarnie."

When she set the sandwich down before Harry, he picked it up gratefully; he'd been given woefully small helpings of roast beef and vegetables at dinner, and was still very hungry. _Maybe this isn't so bad after all,_ he thought, biting into the sandwich and nodding at Gary. He'd been silly to worry. _And it's just the sort of thing you'd have done, Sirius,_ he thought wistfully, as he chewed and swallowed.

Harry watched the telly, ate his sandwich, and gamely listened to Gary describe his own brilliant performance in their match. _This was why I came_ , Harry thought, grinning at the way Gary cavorted while he spoke, a bundle of energy that had a specific purpose: to win at football.

Harry didn't want to think about _his_ purpose in life: to kill Voldemort or be killed by him.

So he chewed and watched and listened, and was even feeling a little grateful toward Marge Dursley that she'd driven him to this. If it weren't for her, he'd be in the lounge of number four, Privet Drive yet, listening to her and her brother insult him and praise Dudley. Despite Gary's slight scariness, this situation was a definite improvement.

#/#/#

Severus Snape's hand slipped unobtrusively into his robe pocket, finding his wand and wrapping his long fingers around it. _One good hex, that's all I'd need and the world would have one less Malfoy in it._

He watched the boy, his pale, pointed face eager in the orange glow of the Muggle streetlight. He appeared to be miming, pressing his body against an invisible barrier that rebuffed him gently but firmly. Draco Malfoy was not getting through.

Beside him, Macnair was, similarly, testing the spell that protected Harry Potter. Every evening since Potter had returned to Surrey from Hogwarts, the Dark Lord's minions were positioned in a rough circle with a two mile radius around the Dursley house; that was the closest they'd been able to come, due to Dumbledore's protection spell.

Except Snape, of course.

However, he could not reveal that he had no problem penetrating the barrier. If he were seen crossing over, his cover would be blown and he could no longer function as one of Dumbledore's most valuable assets: a Death Eater spy. He'd laughed with Lucius Malfoy about having fooled Dumbledore into thinking he was a spy, he'd apologized to the Dark Lord for using this subterfuge to elude imprisonment, for his denial of his True Master, and he'd suffered for it. While _Cruciatus_ was the Dark Lord's favourite method for keeping his servants in line, it was not his only option when someone needed to be punished.

He sighed, watching the stupid young Malfoy continue to press futilely against the barrier. Dumbledore's protection spell was the deepest ancient magic, a guaranteed protection against magical enemies, and would not be defeated by a mere boy, Snape knew. He wished he could have been anywhere else, as he was rather worried about the prospect of having to pretend to press against an invisible wall that, for him, did not exist. (While he could lie with alacrity, due to his Occlumency training, lying in his physical actions was not something to which he was accustomed.) Unfortunately, Dumbledore had given him the task of keeping an eye on young Malfoy, after the stupid whelp had snuck off to the Weasley home in Devon the previous afternoon. He'd evidently been attempting to get revenge on the Weasley girl for hexing him in Umbridge's office, when Potter and his gang had flown off to the Ministry (on _Thestrals_ , of all things!) to rescue Sirius Black. Malfoy had hit Ron Weasley instead of his sister (the two had been playing Quidditch in an orchard near the house) and Ron had ended up in St. Mungo's with more than a few broken bones.

In addition to having attacked Ron and Ginny Weasley, therefore performing magic out of school, he'd let Ron Weasley see him after the attack. He even talked to him, after which he'd Disapparated. Snape counted up the serious offences in his head: underage magic, performing a spell with the intent to harm—even kill—another person; successful completion of said spell, with the result that the victim was hospitalized with a number of broken bones; illegally Apparating (no licence and underage).

However, despite a slight change at the Ministry, no charges were brought against Malfoy. It could not be proved that Weasley had fallen from his broom because of a spell; only Ron Weasley, not Ginny Weasley, had witnessed Malfoy at the crime scene, so there was no corroborating witness; and individuals who were not related to Draco Malfoy (not his mother, for instance) had vouched for him, giving Malfoy an alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the alleged crime. Even testing his wand turned up nothing, but he might have borrowed someone else's wand to go to the Weasley property.

Malfoy couldn't be touched.

It didn't hurt, Snape knew, that a number of the people at the Ministry responsible for deciding whether to pursue the case had probably been on the receiving end of quite a lot of Malfoy gold before Lucius had received his one-way ticket to Azkaban. Since the news had come down that the Dementors had left the island prison, most wizards were expecting news of another escape any day. As it was, Bellatrix Lestrange, her husband and her brother-in-law had managed to escape when the Dementors were still guarding the place. What could stop her and people like Lucius Malfoy now?

Snape knew, of course, that the Ministry had set up a complicated schedule for rotating four teams of Aurors on and off of prison guard duty. Dumbledore was down one member of the Order at the moment, as Kingsley Shacklebolt was on prison guard duty for a fortnight. And after that, Tonks would go for another fortnight. Not that Snape thought she was any great loss to the Order; her incessant change of appearance he found merely irksome and childish. At least Shacklebolt behaved like an _adult_.

Snape watched Malfoy and Macnair, resisting the urge to sigh. It mattered not whether he was with Death Eaters or members of the Order, he could count on the fingers of one hand the people for whom he felt at minimum a grudging respect. Dumbledore was one, of course. McGonagall was another. Alastor Moody just barely scraped by. Kingsley Shacklebolt. Last—and certainly least—was Remus Lupin. Five. One hand.

Lupin was an excellent spy, Snape had to admit. He lurked nearby now, unbeknownst to Malfoy and Macnair, wearing an Invisibility Cloak and keeping an eye on Macnair, since Snape's chief job was to keep track of Malfoy. Lupin had studied Occlumency and Snape was sometimes able to communicate silently with him, though he had to be very careful to avoid delving deeply into Lupin's mind. It had been bad enough nearly being killed by Lupin when they were in school; he didn't want to relive again and again the night that Lupin had, as a child, been bitten by a werewolf himself. Snape had seen a brief glimpse of this once, and that was enough for him. He'd had flashbacks after that of the "prank" Sirius Black had played on him, and had not tried to communicate with Lupin in this way for some time after. He only did it when it was absolutely necessary; exploring the inner recesses of a werewolf's mind was not something he was terribly interested in doing, no matter how talented a spy Lupin was.

He jerked his head up suddenly. Malfoy had cried out.

"I'm through! I got through! It collapsed!" He looked like he might dance a jig. Macnair looked sceptical.

"Don't be ridicu—" But Macnair put his hand where it had previously been halted, finding that the air offered no resistance. He shuffled forward on the pavement, holding his hands before him as though he was playing blindman's bluff. Nothing appeared to be interested in stopping him. Snape swallowed, apprehensive.

"Well, let's not just stand here! Let's go! Who knows if it'll close again?" Draco Malfoy said eagerly. Snape nodded stoically at him, then sent a thought in the direction of where he knew Remus Lupin to be.

 _Follow us. I don't like this._

He felt rather than heard Lupin's reply echo in his brain: _I agree._

So the four of them—three visible wizards, one invisible werewolf-wizard—walked into the quiet suburb of Little Whinging, preparing to go to number four, Privet Drive.

 _Bloody hell, Potter,_ thought Severus Snape as he walked quickly, to keep up with the anxious Malfoy and Macnair.

 _What have you done now?_

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	3. Absent without Leave

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 **Replay**

#/#/#

 **Chapter Three**

 **Absent without Leave**

#/#/#

"I can't _wait_ to see the expression on Potter's face when he sees _me_ ," Malfoy said, grinning maniacally. "And he thought he was so _safe_ here, that his precious _Dumbledore_ would protect him."

Snape wanted to throttle the boy, to halt his annoying sing-song voice, but settled for letting him prattle on; perhaps he would incriminate himself. However, Snape would need someone else to witness a misstep by Malfoy if he wasn't to destroy his own cover. Even a Muggle would do. (The Ministry could question the person before modifying his or her memory.) He wasn't certain how he was going to manage it, but he _would_ see to it that Malfoy paid for attacking Ron and Ginny Weasley. Of course, he didn't think much of the Weasleys for allowing their children to wander off to play Quidditch during a _war_. They _should_ have been staying at the Order headquarters in London, though he found the Weasleys' presence at number twelve, Grimmauld Place to be a very effective deterrent to his going there very often, except when he had to give reports. It would, however, have saved him from cleaning up the mess that had resulted from the brief period during which they'd attempted to return to the Burrow.

 _Bloody hell,_ he thought again. _How did the barrier collapse? Dumbledore insisted that Potter was protected by the most ancient magic, virtually foolproof._

 _Foolproof. Fool._ Snape made a sceptical noise which only he could hear as he strode down the the pavement behind Malfoy and Macnair. _Potter is an inveterate fool, just like his father, just like Sirius Black. If there is a way to put himself at risk, Potter will find it. And make the life of everyone protecting him—Muggle and magical—a living hell._

 _Do I dare try to Apparate?_ Remus asked Snape silently, surprising him. He'd almost forgotten about the werewolf. _In addition to the spell, Albus said he'd put an anti-Apparation jinx on the village, partly so Dung can't run off when he's supposed to have guard duty. Don't know what will happen to me if I try. I don't fancy being Splinched._

Snape watched the two figures in front of him, the old man and the boy, thinking back at Lupin, _Stay with us. If the time comes that we need Albus, I have an emergency Portkey to Hogwarts castle. I'll need to stay with them, but you can use it._

Lupin agreed with him and they continued on as sirens cut through the night. They finally turned onto a small, tidy street with a signpost proclaiming it to be _Privet Drive_. However, Snape found that other Death Eaters had beaten them there; number four was smoking and the rear appeared to be in flames. There were already Muggle fire-fighting vehicles outside the house, heralded by the sirens they'd heard. Men in strange hats and what appeared to be oversized raincoats were tramping about the flowerbeds, carrying enormous hoses that spewed geysers of water at the flames. A white van with a peculiar device protruding from the top blocked traffic on the street and a very glossy, lacquered-looking woman stood on the lawn, speaking quickly into a sort of wand, which rather confused Snape.

He, Malfoy and Macnair did their best to blend in with the neighbours, standing about on the pavement in clusters from three to five, talking excitedly. Snape heard snatches of conversation, which was obviously about Harry:

" _He's a juvenile delinquent, you know. This had to happen sooner or later._ "

" _Bloody hell, I'd blow up Vernon Dursley in a trice, and I ain't no delinquent. If Potter did this, I'd like to shake his hand._ "

" _Poor Petunia! As if she hasn't enough to worry about. Did you know she's nursing her poor sister-in-law day and night? She's dying. Any day now, to hear Petunia tell it._ "

" _Most likely all the way dead, now, no waiting. I saw bodies being carried out of the house._ "

" _The big one told Greta Lockwax that the house was firebombed._ "

Snape almost jumped out of his skin when a sharp, shrill whine from one of the Muggle vehicles started up again; it was smaller than the vehicles with the hoses and roared along the otherwise quiet street away from Snape, Macnair and Malfoy. _An ambulance,_ he realised after a moment, cursing himself for hesitating. He wondered who was in it. Was it taking Potter away? Or one of his relatives? Where was it going? Where was the nearest Muggle hospital? Were the bodies that had been removed dead or alive?

The woman on the lawn suddenly bolted for the white van, along with a man Snape hadn't noticed who'd been crouching in the shrubbery with a large black _thing_ on his shoulders, trailing wires. Was it a camera? Bloody hell, was this going to be on the Muggle news?

The woman and her cameraman, presumably, roared off after the ambulance. Snape whispered to Malfoy and Macnair, "Wait here. Now that she's out of the way, I'll go in. Keep an eye on the front, in case they carry out more casualties."

"Come on, Snape!" Malfoy whinged. Snape's eyes flashed at his impertinence, which Malfoy was actually astute enough to notice. "I mean—Professor. I want to see!"

"Aurors from the Ministry could be here any minute! _I_ have a cover story, _you_ do not. I can simply say that I am his teacher and was checking on him. What reason do _you_ have for being here?" Snape responded. "Are you _that_ eager to be brought before the Wizengamot? Thinking of sharing a cell in Azkaban with your father? Is that why you attacked Ginny Weasley?"

Malfoy's mouth worked silently, open and closed. "But—I want to help the others!" he finally said. "There may still be Muggles in there. We can have some fun!"

 _Damn_ , Snape thought. Malfoy didn't take the bait and admit to trying to attack the Weasley girl. However, to his relief, Macnair actually "agreed" with Snape, though he presumably had radically different reasons.

"You're no good to the Dark Lord in prison, lad. We'll do as your professor suggests and wait here. It's always good to have someone checking your escape route for you, anyways. Remember that. You're in training, something else you need to remember. You can't just go charging into a situation. Remember—we heard that Potter was doing secret Defence Against the Dark Arts training all last year. No telling what he's picked up. Sounds like even the Muggles around here are scared of him. Can't be too careful. He's probably miles ahead of you by now," he added, looking disdainfully at the thin blond boy.

Draco Malfoy drew himself up indignantly and whipped out his wand. "You don't know what my father taught me before he went to prison! Why, right this minute, I could—"

"Put that away!" Snape growled, glancing at the other Muggles nearby and pushing Malfoy's wand against his body so that it became lost in the folds of his robe. Luckily, the people of Little Whinging were so absorbed in their gossip about Potter and the Dursleys they hadn't noticed a young wizard drawing his wand. "You won't be of use to the Dark Lord if you can't _think_ ," he growled between his teeth, following Macnair's lead.

Draco Malfoy scowled, resembling a petulant five year old. Snape was starting to think he'd definitely drawn the short straw to be stuck shadowing the boy. _The sooner I have enough evidence for him join his father in Azkaban, the better._

He stepped into the shadow of an exceptionally large privet hedge beside number four's next door neighbour and put a Disillusionment Charm on himself, shivering at the sensation of egg sliding over his body. He walked out of the shelter of the hedge and around the side of the house so he could see the rear, where most of the action was; Muggles with axes were chopping the conservatory to bits to create a firebreak, so the flames wouldn't carry to nearby houses. The already-dry summer foliage looked like kindling waiting to be lit; the hydrangeas would go up like ancient parchment if the fire progressed to the front, Snape thought. When he lightly pushed open the front door, which hadn't been properly closed, the water hitting the rear of the house made it sound like a monsoon had been imported to Surrey from the tropics. The house smelled both damp and singed, making Snape's nose twitch. He needed to find out what had _happened._

 _I'm right behind you,_ Lupin thought at him. _Don't close the door yet._

 _Thanks for the warning,_ Snape thought back at him, not wanting to admit to being startled again. He kept forgetting about Lupin, who'd obviously been tracking his thoughts to locate him, though Snape knew that someone who was keenly observant could still spot the telltale signs of a person moving about while cloaked with the Disillusionment Charm.

Everything about this evening was jarring. Night after night there had been absolutely nothing of note when he had kept company with Death Eaters at the perimeter of Dumbledore's protection, and now this. _If the Dark Lord can get through Dumbledore's spell here,_ he thought, _is even Hogwarts safe_?

That was another jarring thought. He had to push it from his mind, concentrate on the work at hand. He looked briefly around the lounge of number four, Privet Drive, which was not burnt but quite damp, and the front window was broken. Beyond that, the dining room was a mess, the table and chairs in a charred, soggy heap, singed wallpaper hanging in strips, dripping water. Through a gash in the wall he could glimpse a little of the kitchen and what remained of the conservatory beyond that, where leaping flames were still visible amid spouts of water gushing from the hoses.

He returned to the front hall and strode quickly up the stairs, hoping both that he would and wouldn't find Harry. The house's Muggle residents all appeared to be gone. Was _that_ why this had happened? Dumbledore had told him that the basis of the spell's protection was Harry's blood relationship to his aunt, Lily's closest relative, and that as long as her home was also his home, all would be well. Had she kicked him out on his ear? Snape could well imagine feeling compelled to do that, having wanted to throw Potter out of the Potions dungeon for the previous five years, but the stupid woman had been _told_ that she could not do that. Did she not realize that the spell afforded protection to her and her family as well as to her nephew?

 _Evidently not,_ he answered himself silently, cursing the stupid Muggles as he'd cursed Potter. _And now see where it's got them._

A heap of clothing in the upstairs corridor blocked the passage. He started to step over it but misjudged how long his stride would need to be, stepping on some of the clothes on the far side of the pile. Except that he also stepped on what felt like a human; a cry emerged from the untidy pile and he pulled his foot back, bending over to find the person he'd trod on.

There was no one there. Then suddenly, there was. Tonks pulled the Invisibility Cloak from her head and gazed gratefully up at Snape. "Who's there?" He took the charm off himself so she could see him, as there was no point to it now. "Oh, gawd, Snape. Am I glad it's you! It's bloody awful, all of this is." The tracks of dried tears striped her cheeks and a gash on her forehead dripped blood onto her nose. She appeared to be covered in soot. "I tried to stop'em, honest I did," she choked. "I don't know where they could've come from."

"What happened?" he asked, helping her to stand. She winced, wrapping her arms around her waist.

"Ribs," she explained briefly, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain.

"Here, let me," Remus Lupin said, taking off his own Invisibility Cloak and putting his arm around her shoulders. "I don't think you should try to stand on your own right now."

"Thanks, Remus. Didn't know you was here, too," she said shyly, averting her eyes from him as he pulled her against his chest. Snape rolled his eyes; Tonks' obvious schoolgirl crush on Remus Lupin was just another one of the very annoying things he'd had to endure since Dumbledore had recalled the Order.

"What _happened_?" he repeated through gritted teeth, as quietly as he could while still being audible.

"The spell just stopped working. All o'these Death Eater types were suddenly flying up the road, like, on their brooms. I thought—maybe they're just on a fishing expedition, yeah? Trying to find Harry's house. They prob'ly know the name of 'is village, an' all. But then they started attacking, and I was hexing them right back, but there were too many. I got one or two really good, but they still got away. I couldn't keep'em all back by meself. Some of'em aimed flames at the back of the house, others went into the house, lookin' for Harry. I don't know if they found 'im. If they didn', that means—" She let out a distressed sob. "I let 'im get past me! I'm no better when I'm _here_ than Dung was when he _left_ 'is post! I was here the _entire time_ and never saw a thing! How can I—" She choked on a sob and Lupin tightened his hold around her shoulders; "how can I face Dumbledore and the others? Because of me—"

She couldn't finish, putting her head on Remus Lupin's shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably. Snape drew his lips into a line at her display of emotion. Finally, he said in carefully measured tones, "Many's the time at school when Potter managed to evade even _me_ in order to sneak about the castle at night. And you needn't worry about Dumbledore." He cleared his throat and swallowed for a moment, thinking of what he wanted to say. _It was on my watch that the Dark Lord attacked Potter's parents in Godric's Hollow._ No; he couldn't possibly tell her that…

He didn't know whether he'd said anything that helped, but he needed her to pull herself together to keep the Muggles from discovering them. Or worse—Malfoy and Macnair. He didn't think much of Tonks and had absolutely no idea how she'd got through Auror training. He wasn't even certain how she'd got through her Potions OWLs, let alone NEWT-level Potions with him, a few years earlier. He remembered the many melted cauldrons that usually preceded a mildly successful potion from her. He hoped her potion-brewing days were behind her; the world would be a lot safer. But if he knew Potter (which he did) and the Dursleys (he knew about them second hand, but he knew about them) none of this was likely to be Tonks' fault. She'd clearly fought to the best of her ability and was grossly outnumbered by some very determined Death Eaters.

"Here is what we shall do," he told her and Lupin. "The pair of you shall use the Portkey to the castle; you shall give me your Invisibility Cloak, Lupin. I have need of it and you do not, once you are at Hogwarts; a Disillusionment Charm is useless at close range. And your cloak would be also be useless," he told Tonks, "as it smells like fire and damp. Madam Pomfrey can take care of you at the castle while Lupin tells Dumbledore what's happened. I shall see whether I can learn which Death Eaters did this."

"I can help wif'at!" she said thickly, through her tears. "Well, sort of. See, I saw a bloke I recognised, which really threw me, 'cause 'e works at the Ministry in Transportation, and I never pegged 'im for a Death Eater. I didn' recognise none o' the others, but I could do, if I saw photos."

"Who was the Ministry employee?" Snape said sharply, one eye on the stair, should any Muggles—or Death Eaters—appear.

"That bloke, what's 'is name, you know—Basil. That's 'is name! Basil. Last person I'd ever 'spect to be a Death Eater."

Snape's mouth was very thin as he nodded at her. "You're probably right about that. Because he's not, I'll wager. He's a good friend of both Arthur Weasley and Dumbledore. It's very likely, I think, that the people you saw were not wearing their own faces."

Tonks swore. "Then seeing _any_ of them is totally useless. I didn' think o' that. It occurred to me that some of'em might be under Imperius; they moved kind of weird, like, and didn' seem to really see what was in front of'em."

 _Imperius_. He cursed himself for not thinking of that. He looked at Tonks with a grudging respect; perhaps there _was_ a good reason for her having got through Auror training. "Good point," he conceded, before taking a clear vial from his robe pocket. It contained a single red feather, a rather small one from the crest on Fawkes' head.

"Here is the Portkey. You grab thoroughly onto Remus, Tonks. Hold out your hand," he said to the werewolf, who thrust his Invisibility Cloak at Snape first. The Cloak under his left arm, Snape uncorked the vial and turned it over; the feather wafted gently from the vial and the moment it touched Remus Lupin's hand he and Tonks appeared to be pulled into a kind of vortex, disappearing in a silver rush of wind. Snape grabbed onto a nearby doorknob, almost carried along in their wake, and heaved a sigh of relief when the dust settled in the hall again.

Donning the Invisibility Cloak, he descended the stairs and left the house. Malfoy and Macnair were still on the pavement, waiting with the Dursleys' neighbours for some news as though they'd lived in the village all their lives. Instead, Snape approached the vehicle bearing the legend _Surrey Fire Brigade_ , for the man in charge appeared to be talking on a telephone and Snape was in sore need of information, of good solid facts.

"Yeah, I'm _sorry_ , Bernie. I couldn't stop her," he said into a small black box cupped against his cheek. "She shoved her microphone into the woman's face before anyone could do anything. Yeah, I _know_ the woman was being put in an ambulance. You don't need to tell me that we aren't to let bloody reporters do that. What a _cow_. Anyway, she's gone and it's almost under control. S'not a firebombing though; don't know what did this. We can't find nothing. It's like the place blew itself up. Damn queer."

 _So,_ thought Snape; _one of the people taken away by ambulance was a woman._ That was probably Potter's aunt. Which meant that number four, Privet Drive wouldn't be her home for a while, presumably. A hospital would be. And where was Potter? _Had_ they turned him out?

He didn't see any way of getting more information at the moment; he was at the mercy of whatever the Muggle said into his—telephone? Snape didn't think they came so small, and he also thought they required long, curling cords. He would recommend to Dumbledore that they get Moody on it; with his magical eye, he could see through doors at a hospital and read medical reports through doctors' clipboards. It was time for Snape to return to what he did best: pretending to be a loyal Death Eater.

He slipped back into the house, removed the Cloak and stuffed it discreetly under his robes. He put the Disillusionment Charm on himself once more and slipped out of the house unseen in the now-thorough darkness.

In the shadow of the hedge he took the charm off himself once more, surprising Malfoy but not Macnair. "No one left in the house," he whispered, watching the Muggles return to their vehicle, preparing to leave the smoking, soggy shell of a house. "We should report to the Dark Lord, find out who we should congratulate for this."

Malfoy dropped his jaw. "Congratulate? Can't we just say we did it, too?"

Snape fought a very strong urge to hex the boy. "No, because those who really did it will tell him that we did not. It pays to be generous when others fall into good fortune, Malfoy. Otherwise you risk those people attempting to steal _your_ thunder when _you_ have good fortune. The Dark Lord does not hold with people who lay claim to accomplishments not their own."

"That doesn't sound very dark to me," Draco Malfoy mumbled, following the two older wizards away from the wrecked house. Macnair whirled on him.

"Shall I tell our Master that he doesn't seem sufficiently _dark_ to you, yeah, Malfoy? Or would you like to tell him to his face?"

Malfoy trembled and stared into the frightening face, not an inch from his. "Erm, no. I'll just—"

"You'll just shut your mouth now," Snape said briskly, striding quickly down the pavement. "We need to get out of this village; I doubt that we can Apparate here."

Suddenly a sharp pain made him double up, gripping his left forearm. He bit his lip to keep from screaming, drawing blood. Macnair had no such self-restraint, crying out hoarsely and sinking to his knees. Snape glared at him.

"Get up. As I said, we need to get out of the village. We don't have time to roll around on the ground like infants," he hissed. "Ignore it until we can do something about it."

Malfoy looked very eager, following them with a bounce in his step. The pain had passed but Snape knew that they would need to report soon. When they'd finally walked the length of the High Street and were officially out of Little Whinging, Snape said to Malfoy, "Go home. You do not have the Mark yet. This is not your concern."

"Not my concern! I want to come!"

"You cannot! The Protean charm on the Mark prevents our telling anyone else the location to which we are being summoned. It—it isn't far to Wiltshire. Go!"

"Not that far!"

Snape raised his wand, preparing to Apparate, but an irate Draco Malfoy beat him to it. _Aha!_ he thought. Now I've seen you Apparate illegally. A pity I can't tell anyone.

Macnair nodded to him and they waved their wands simultaneously.

#/#/#

Harry enjoyed his second bacon sarnie. Gary was telling something like his thirtieth football story and an advert for tinned meat was on the telly. He was laughing at a face Gary was making, to simulate having been hit in the nose by a bloke twice his size (he'd have to be as big as Hagrid, Harry reckoned, for the story to be true) when he heard something at the edge of his attention span, something that sounded familiar.

"… _most shocking thing ever to happen in the sleepy suburb of Little Whinging._ "

"—and then me best mate, see, he—"

"Ssssh!" Harry said quickly, staring at the television.

An immaculate blonde woman stood on the brown lawn of what was clearly his house, saying, "How far will a disgruntled teenager go to get revenge? Well, if you're Harry Potter, you'd be willing to fire-bomb your own house."

Harry choked, his eyes wide. A moment later, the grotesque image of Aunt Marge filled the television screen. She was strapped to a stretcher, a bloody bandage wrapped around her head, her face covered in soot and scorch marks, her eyes wild. "Wants to be like his godfather, he does, a mass murderer! He _brags_ about it!"

A moment later, the reporter was speaking to Yvonne, who held an ice pack to her cheek while a paramedic took her blood pressure. "He's in touch with a fugitive, you know, that Sirius Black, the one who escaped from prison three years ago. He visits him at school. Black, that is. I'd like to know why the police still haven't caught _him._ He's probably teaching that young thug everything he knows."

The reporter's face filled the screen. "And so there you have it. An unhappy sixteen year old boy with a previous criminal record—"

 _I haven't!_ Harry thought indignantly.

"—who is close with a fugitive. The result? A fire-bombed house and an entire family in hospital. Greta Lockwax, reporting from Little Whinging, Surrey."

The television screen showed a middle-aged man in a dark suit sitting at a newsdesk, holding a sheaf of papers at which he never looked. "Potter is reportedly a student at St Brutus's Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys, something which should surprise no one. We have the headmaster of St Brutus's on the telephone; just a moment. Ah, yes, hello, Mr Nacey. Thank you for joining us this evening. What can you tell us about Harry Potter? What offences caused him to be sent to St Brutus's? What sort of student is he? Always picking fights with the other lads, is he?"

There was an awkward silence on the line; the dead air was deafening. "Mr Nacey?" the newsreader said with a shaking voice. "Are we having technical difficulties?"

Finally, a terse man's voice said, "We are not having technical difficulties. There is no such student at St Brutus's. I do not know who told you he was enrolled here, but they are sadly misinformed. All of our boys are being rehabilitated to be productive members of society. None of them would ever do such a thing as fire-bomb his own home. If Potter is in some other facility, perhaps they are trying to blame St Brutus's for their inability to reform him—"

"Erm, thank you, Mr Nacey," the man said awkwardly. "On a related note, we have spoken with Scotland Yard about the fugitive now known to be Harry Potter's 'godfather,' Sirius Black. When asked why the hunt for Black was called off over two years ago, Scotland Yard simply responded _no comment_."

Gary had been squinting at the television screen above the bar; something the man had said made him think. "Oi, Harry—didn't you say your name is Potter? Harry? Mate?"

He whirled around, looking in every corner of the pub. The boy with the messy black hair, glasses, and scar on his forehead was nowhere to be seen.

#/#/#

Harry crept down the pavement under his Invisibility Cloak, his heart beating rapidly, his mind tumbling over the words he'd heard coming from the television. _How far will a disgruntled teenager go to get revenge? Well, if you're Harry Potter, you'd be willing to fire-bomb your own house._

 _Fire-bomb my own house!_ he thought indignantly. Then he stopped dead, feeling like an icy fist had closed around his heart. _Oh, no. The house has been attacked. Voldemort has attacked Privet Drive._

He leaned against a wall, swallowing, trying to work out where he could go. He should never have come out, he should have stayed at home.

 _To get blown up?_

 _No,_ he thought, _to help defend my home._

 _Home._ He'd just been thinking that Privet Drive wasn't really his home, Grimmauld Place was, and he'd even told Gary—

 _Bloody hell._

He'd left Privet Drive and even Little Whinging well before his birthday, he'd told someone his name and that his home was Grimmauld Place in London. It was _his_ fault this had happened. He'd broken the charm, he'd destroyed the protection of the ancient magic Dumbledore had used since he was first brought to his aunt and uncle. And now his house lay in ruins and he wasn't even certain his aunt—the basis of his protection—was still alive. He might be responsible for her death, and maybe the deaths of his uncle and cousin. He wasn't a bit upset that Marge was injured, though. Then he remembered that earlier he'd thought it would be poetic justice if she outlived them all. He sincerely hoped that this wasn't what had happened. He didn't want to live with the Dursleys anymore, but he didn't want them dead, either.

And it was all his fault, just because he couldn't exercise a little self-control and stay in the house with Marge.

He looked around, wondering how on earth he was going to get back to Little Whinging. He didn't know when the next bus was due; it might not be for an hour, and he couldn't count on someone else getting the bus to Little Whinging, so he'd have a way to get on and off. Certainly he didn't dare travel without the Cloak; if he encountered Gordon and Chloe on the bus again, Gordon would surely recognise him, and the pub where they were going in Harrington might have also shown the news report on the television. Gordon could have gone to the bar for some food or drinks to take to their room and seen it.

"You want to go _where_?" one of the footballers said to Gary, who had walked out of _The Bartered Bull_. Harry started to edge away from them, but stopped when he heard what Gary was saying.

"Greater Whinging. S'not too far. That bloke I was just talking to had the same name as the bloke they said blew up that house. The thing is—how could have he been blowing up a house when he was sitting right here in the pub having rotten crisps and flat Coke? It's a classic frame-up. He's probably on the run now 'cause of it, so we should tell the coppers he's not the one. Only fair. Remember Dirk doing that frame-up on me, when twenty-quid went missing from Archie's wallet? I appreciated Tony saying he knew I hadn't done it 'cause he was with me at his old lady's at the time. If there's one sort of person I hate, it's someone who'd frame someone else. This Harry needs to know it's safe for him to stop running. We can tell the cops it wasn't him. We _got_ to go. It happened in Little Whinging, but they probably got the police station in Greater Whinging."

His friend shrugged and climbed into the passenger seat of the car. "All right, then. Off to do a good deed."

Harry didn't know what else to do; while Gary's door was still open, he quietly took out his wand and pointed it at the boot of the car, whispering, " _Alohomora_ ," hoping Dumbledore would think of this as an emergency. He climbed in with difficulty and did not close the boot completely. Gary sounded all right, and he probably could have revealed his presence to him (though he couldn't have explained the Invisibility Cloak), but he didn't want to risk the police taking him into custody first and asking questions later. The problem with the story Gary was prepared to tell the police was that Harry would have to explain how he'd come to be at _The Bartered Bull_. Since he hadn't paid to ride the bus and was not seen by anyone on the bus, his story very likely would not be believed. Gary had also been drinking quite a lot and probably smelled like it. The sweet little old lady who'd left the bus at the same time as Harry could probably be located fairly easily, and she would say that no one else got off the bus with her. As well-intentioned as Gary was, Harry was convinced that his telling the police that Harry had been framed would cause more problems than it would solve.

It felt like the longest drive of Harry's life, even including the flying car ride to Hogwarts in his second year. Of course, he'd never had to ride in a boot before; Vernon threatened many times to make him ride in the boot, but he'd never actually done it. When Gary finally turned off the motor, Harry waited for the sound of his footsteps and those of his friend to recede before carefully raising the boot's door. He glanced around; he was in the car park outside the Greater Whinging police station, which was very near the Grunnings factory. Harry crept from the boot, careful that the Cloak was covering him thoroughly, and slowly closed it. He ran quietly down the pavement, feeling an uncontrollable guilt wash over him during the time (a very long time) that it took for him to pass the enormous factory, his uncle's domain. He sped up when he drew closer to the streets near his house, a miasma of soggy-burnt-house assaulting his nostrils as he came closer.

Standing across the street from number four, Privet Drive, he stared helplessly through the Cloak at what remained of the house in which he'd grown up. The empty windows stared at him like the catatonic eyes of someone who'd been kissed by a Dementor. The street was very quiet; not even a slight breeze moved the leaves on the trees. Harry didn't know what to do. The Muggle authorities thought he'd done this, so the Ministry would probably also think him guilty. They, however, would very likely assume that he'd used magic to blow up the house (especially since that _was_ what had been used).

He had to find someone to help him, someone he could convince that he was innocent. Yes, he'd left the house and broken the charm, that was his fault; but he hadn't attacked anyone. _He_ was the intended target of the Death Eaters. And he had to find out how his aunt and uncle were, and Dudley. Marge and Yvonne looked like they'd pull through.

He couldn't imagine where he could go. His money might take him to London, but how could he face the people at number twelve, Grimmauld Place after this? Then he remembered:

 _Tonks._

What had happened to Tonks, who'd been guarding the house? Had she tried to fight the Death Eaters by herself? Was she all right?

He paced the pavement, guilt starting to make him feel like his stomach lining was eating itself. _This is the biggest mess ever,_ he thought, trying not to hark back to the image of Sirius dying, but failing. _First I fly off to London with five of my friends, nearly getting them killed, then I get Sirius killed, and now this._

He felt too stupid to live.

 _What to do, what to do?_

Suddenly, a cat leapt from a garden wall to the pavement before running across the street, dashing behind the dustbins beside number five. _Cats,_ he thought. _That's it! I'll go to Mrs Figg's!_

He tried to calm his breathing as he marched purposefully to Wisteria Walk, glad to finally have a plan, of sorts. However, when he was still across the street from Mrs Figg's, he saw something that disconcerted him more than a little.

Outside her house an unfamiliar wizard stood guard, his wand drawn for all to see. Through a window, Harry could see another wizard he didn't know, pacing. _The Ministry are already here,_ he realized. _They knew I'd come here. They're going to arrest me and haul me before the Wizengamot. They're going to expel me and break my wand._

He swallowed. _No. I will never let that happen._

He remembered his determination to become a fugitive when he had inflated Aunt Marge, his resolve to run for as long as he needed to. But when he'd decided to do that, he had all of his belongings, his trunk and clothes and broom, all of which had probably burned up in the fire at number four. This time he had only the clothes on his back and a far worse offence for which he was being blamed. And even though Voldemort's return was now being acknowledged by the Ministry, he strongly doubted that there would be leniency shown to an underage wizard who had blown up his house and put his family in hospital.

Even though he hadn't.

Suddenly, a car turned onto Wisteria Walk and slowed down when it reached Mrs Figg's house; Harry watched, frowning. A woman who looked very familiar got out of the car while the engine idled; she unlocked the garage door of the house next door to Mrs Figg's and struggled to pull it up. When the door was open she returned to her car, presumably so she could drive it into the garage. His heart in his throat, Harry thought quickly, seeing his opportunity. He had no other choice. He needed to take shelter somewhere, and this would give him the opportunity to watch Mrs Figg's house from close range.

He dashed across the street and into the open garage while the woman was still climbing into her car and closing the door. Pressing himself flat against the wall of the garage, he watched her drive the car closer and closer to him, his heartbeat growing deafeningly loud (to him). He heaved a sigh of relief when she finally stopped the car and turned off the engine. When she emerged from the car and switched on the light inside the garage, he finally realised why she had looked so familiar to him.

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	4. Fugitive

#/#/#

 **Replay**

#/#/#

 **Chapter Four**

 **Fugitive**

#/#/#

Harry stared.

The blonde woman was completely oblivious to the invisible teenage wizard in her garage; she took her handbag out of the car, closed the door, removed a handkerchief from her bag and noisily blew her nose. Harry had forgotten that Mrs Figg lived next door to Miss Harrison, whom he hadn't seen since the previous summer. She'd been jogging near the park on one of the days when he'd been hanging about there, half hoping to run into Dudley and his gang. They'd been there that day, too, giving her a hard time with catcalls and lewd comments until she'd made a rude gesture with her hand and jogged off, as though unconcerned that they were continuing to comment loudly behind her back.

He'd been both shocked and pleased at the time; Harry didn't think she'd seen him when she'd made the gesture at Dudley's gang. He'd never thought of a teacher doing such a thing, especially aimed at former pupils. (Though, having experienced three terms of Umbridge, he wasn't sure there was anything he'd put anything past a teacher now.)

Miss Harrison hadn't been his teacher since he was ten years old, but he still thought of her that way, more so than he thought of her as Mrs Figg's next-door neighbour. Miss Harrison had also been his teacher when he was two years younger, and he was quite glad to have discovered, upon starting his last year in primary school, that she had been moved up to teaching one of the top classes. When he had stayed with Mrs Figg he had only sometimes seen Miss Harrison working in her garden or driving her car in and out of the garage, and if he happened to be outside he would give her a friendly wave, which she always returned, but in all of the times he'd been at Mrs Figg's, they'd never spoken. He'd only ever addressed her or been addressed by her in the school.

Harry felt very lucky to have run into her garage. He knew that she wasn't married, so there would be no husband or children to worry about. (If she had acquired a husband he was sure that his aunt wouldn't have missed the chance to gossip about how long it had taken her to get married.) This meant that he could lurk in her house and keep an eye on Mrs Figg's without having to worry about staying out of the way of a slew of other people.

Oblivious to having company, Miss Harrison opened the rear door of the car to retrieve carrier bags bulging with groceries, as well as a long paper sack with a loaf of French bread protruding from it. She looked tired, he thought; in the glaring light of the single bulb hanging from the garage's ceiling he could see dark circles under her large, pale eyes. She sighed as she pulled down the garage door again, inexpertly juggling the food, and when she started moving toward Harry, he panicked, as there was very little space for him to manoeuvre. He was currently blocking the door leading into the house.

However, he managed to move over far enough that she didn't come into contact with him. To his relief, she didn't close the door right away but walked down a short corridor to what Harry assumed was the kitchen. He slipped inside and backed up toward what appeared to be a lavatory; she returned empty-handed to close the door and Harry felt like doing a jig. _It had worked! He was in the house!_

He thought about just hanging about near the garage door, but after she walked back down the small corridor, his curiosity got the better of him and he followed her cautiously, trying to tread very lightly. In his experience, though she'd always been kind enough to him (Miss Harrison was one of only two teachers at the school who didn't seem to have the same opinion of him as the Dursleys), she was very sensitive to her surroundings. Many times, while the class were bent over their work, she had detected all manner of subtle goings-on as she strode up and down the aisles with a steely eye, breezily collecting notes that had been passed surreptitiously or very ably detecting cheats. He knew that his aunt and uncle hadn't liked her; she had never hesitated to find fault with Dudley when he was bullying Harry or another child, cheating on a test or stealing other children's lunches.

Despite her not having been harsh with him, she had never exactly taken him under her wing, either. She seemed very capable but a bit distant, as though she were only teaching for as long as it took her to find something more to her liking. She had an air about her of someone who was just biding her time.

"Pip! I'm back! Where are you?"

Harry froze on his way to the kitchen. _Oh, no._ She had a dog! That wasn't good. It was through sheer luck that he'd escaped with Ripper in the Dursleys' house. If Miss Harrison's dog detected him—and it was likely that it would—then Harry's hiding would be over almost before it started. And if Miss Harrison had seen the news then she would know that he was wanted by the police.

He realised a moment later that she probably _hadn't_ heard about his house being blown up, as she'd just returned from shopping. That was something, at least. Perhaps, if the dog didn't make it impossible, he could subtly unplug the television or radio and prevent her from hearing about it at all. But that still didn't solve the dog problem.

He cautiously continued to approach the kitchen until he was standing in the doorway, bracing himself to be discovered and attacked.

"Oi, Pip! I'm back! Come on, you!"

Miss Harrison was speaking in a rather strange, irritated manner, he thought, almost as though she didn't like her dog very much. Harry watched her spill the contents of the bags onto her kitchen counter, sorting through her purchases and putting the items in the cupboards or fridge. She was muttering darkly under her breath the entire time, pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear when it escaped from its haphazard ponytail.

Harry almost fell over in fright when a thin, dark-haired woman bounced into the kitchen from the hall leading to the front of the house. "I'm here, I'm here, all right? Bloody hell, can't a person go to the loo without being harangued by a harridan?"

Miss Harrison laughed as she turned around, still holding the long French loaf. "Good word, that. 'Harridan harangued.' Is that from one of the tabloids? If it isn't it should be. I can see the headline now: 'Harridan Harangued Husband Hangs—' Well. I want to say 'self,' but that doesn't begin with an 'H.'"

The dark-haired woman looked thoughtful. She was familiar to Harry for some reason, but he couldn't put his finger on where he'd seen her before. "'Hares from Hangers'?"

Miss Harrison made a terrible face at her friend. "Oh, no! That's dreadful. No, no, no." She blew a raspberry at her friend. "No points! Oh, that's just _putrid_ , Pip. You're really off your game tonight."

She removed the bread from its long paper sack and took a knife from a drawer, starting to cut the bread into rounds. Harry breathed a sigh of relief as he realised that 'Pip' was the friend, not a dog. He did think, however, that he could be forgiven for assuming it might be an animal. To his ears, it didn't _sound_ a great deal like a person's name.

'Pip' sighed deeply and pulled herself up to sit beside the sink, her bare legs swinging. She was dressed appropriately for the hot summer weather, in a tee shirt and shorts, but her clothes were rather on the tight side instead of loose and airy, like Miss Harrison's. "I know. This heat has baked my brain. But so has hanging about here, waiting for you. I thought you were going to be back hours ago!"

"I'm not _that_ late," Miss Harrison insisted, continuing to cut the bread. In stark contrast to her friend, she was wearing loose knee-length navy shorts and a white blouse that could have been part of her teaching wardrobe. She handed Pip a slice of bread and her friend began picking bits out of the middle, chewing as she spoke.

"It's not seven o'clock, is it?"

"No, but—"

"So then."

"But wait until you see what I've got!" Miss Harrison cried, suddenly advancing on Harry. His eyes went wide and he backed up the passage to the garage, finally managing to cower in the doorway of the lavatory again while she retrieved something from the car. When she was in the corridor once more she closed the door carelessly, leaving it ajar an inch or so, and Harry gently leaned on it to help it close the rest of the way. He didn't think she'd notice, anyway, as she was striding excitedly into the kitchen carrying something roughly the size of a human head. (For an absurd moment that's what Harry thought it was, but despite finding out some new and disturbing things about his former teacher, he doubted that a decapitated head had caused her excitement.)

He inched back toward the kitchen as Pip walked around the kitchen table, where Miss Harrison had placed the item, scrutinising it thoughtfully. Harry had no idea what it might be, but Pip was now nodding knowledgeably while Miss Harrison stood to the side, grinning excitedly.

"It's almost just like the one I sold Mr Merriweather last week. He was over the moon about it! Said if I had any more he'd take it in a trice, he had loads of clients interested. So as I was driving back from the shops, I saw that the church was taking in donations for the jumble sale this Saturday and I stopped to look, on a lark. Well, the Rector's wife was donating this because she hates it, thinks it looks like a coffin for just a head. She has no idea it's actually _worth_ anything."

Pip looked incredulous. "You mean you conned the _Rector's wife_ out of a valuable antique?"

Miss Harrison frowned. "Not _conned._ She didn't want it. Didn't like it. I was doing her a _favour_ , and benefiting the parish into the bargain. Where's the harm? I'm not likely to give the church anything any other bloody way, so if they want my money, this is how they're going to have to get it," she snorted. Harry was surprised; he'd always thought of Muggle schoolteachers as the sort who went to church and were scrupulously honest, even the ones who'd given him a hard time in school, while Miss Harrison was being rather scornful of the church and evidently a bit dodgy about having acquired a valuable antique from the Rector's wife.

Pip looked at her friend with one brow raised. "All right, Tilda, how much did you pay?"

A wicked grin spread across "Tilda's" face and she said mischievously, "Guess," popping a piece of French bread in her mouth and chewing it while watching her friend. Pip rolled her eyes.

"Fifty p."

"Don't be stupid. I offered her a plausible price, not an insult."

Pip sighed. "Ten quid."

"Lower." Miss Harrison was giggling gleefully and Harry was starting to wonder who she _really_ was; she certainly was bearing less and less of a resemblance to his former teacher. He was, however, starting to see a resemblance between her and someone else he knew.

"Five quid." Pip looked tired of the game, twirling her short, curly dark hair around one finger, her dark eyes blank and bored.

"Close enough! _Four pounds_. And do you know how much Merriweather paid me for the other one? _Seventy-five._ And that was chipped on one side and had been refinished. This one has the original finish and is utterly undamaged. I think he'll give me a hundred for it, easy, if not more."

"A hundred? For a bloody knife-box? It better at least have some knives in it."

"No, just the box. It's all about what the market will bear, Pip. If someone _wants_ to pay a hundred quid for something, then _that's_ what it's worth."

Pip made a face. "Yeah, except I thought you were just dealing in antiques to get rid of all of that old stuff you have crammed in the spare rooms upstairs. And here you are _buying_ something to sell. That's not the way to empty out those rooms."

"I'm not selling my dad's old things just for the sake of emptying out rooms! I'm being very careful and finding the right seller at the right time; if I sold the lot tomorrow I wouldn't get half of what I could eventually get by being careful and timing everything right. Mr Merriweather is becoming interested in my fine taste and practised eye—"

" _Mr Merriweather is interested in more than your eye, you mark me_ ," Pip muttered darkly. Tilda ignored her.

"—and after I bring this to him, the next thing I show him after that will be something he'll _have_ to buy from me, since he'll know that I am discriminating. I'm building my nest egg, Pip. I've already made over fifty thousand in just the last two years. Dad wouldn't have wanted me to sell the lot for nothing, after all."

Pip sniffed. "I'm not completely certain you _want_ to sell things that have to do with your dad," she started to say, then stopped when she saw the look on her friend's face. She cleared her throat and began swinging her legs vigorously again. "At any rate," she said in a too-bright voice, changing the subject, "you missed the excitement while you were out."

Tilda Harrison looked around her quiet kitchen, mystified. "Erm, what excitement? It looks like a tomb around here."

"Oh, around here it is. But I've still got something rather juicy to tell you." Her eyes were positively glowing with the delight of delivering fresh gossip.

Tilda put her fingers in her ears and looked up at the ceiling, as though looking at her friend put her in danger of reading her lips and therefore learning the dreaded gossip. "Pip, I will _not_ listen to a word. You really _must_ get over the need to spread rumours. Act your age! _Honestly_!" This made Harry wonder what the age was she was supposed to be acting; he could believe anything from twenty-five to thirty-five.

Pip smirked, not the least bit chastened by her friend's reaction. "Would you tell Old Soberley to act _her_ age?"

Tilda froze, then looked suspiciously at Pip. She still didn't remove her fingers from her ears. Harry was actually having a difficult time refraining from laughing at the way she looked. "What's the headmistress got to do with this?"

" _She's_ the one who told me about it. Called me on my mobile."

"You were talking to Soberley while you were in the loo? That's not very respectful on your part. She is your boss, after all, even if it is the holiday."

Pip rolled her eyes. "No, _not_ when I was in the loo. Before that. At any rate, she told me to put the news on, so I did." She smirked, looking like she had a secret. Rolling her eyes enticingly at Tilda, she swung her legs even more.

"The news?" Tilda frowned.

"Yes, you know, the news. Known for spreading rumours and innuendo."

Tilda snorted. "It is, actually. But what are you talking about?" she demanded, unable to resist temptation any longer.

"Aha! _Now_ you want to know!" Pip crowed gleefully.

Tilda sighed and sat wearily, her head in her hands. "Yes, yes, tell me what the great news of the day is."

Pip cleared her throat. " _Well,_ " she said, drawing it out, "guess which local delinquent—formerly taught by Miss Matilda Harrison herself and formerly attending Greater Whinging primary school—has _blown up his own house_."

Harry's heart leapt into his throat. _That_ was why 'Pip' had looked so familiar to him! 'Old Soberley,' to whom she had referred, was the headmistress, Mrs Soberley, and Pip was Miss Powers, her secretary. Many's the time he was cooling his heels in the anteroom outside Mrs Soberley's office, waiting to be dressed down for something he'd (inexplicably) done, moving his eyes over every surface in an effort to assuage his boredom while he waited. He'd seen the little plaque on her desk many times: _Philippa Powers_ , it read, but Mrs Soberley had never called her either Philippa or 'Pip' at the school; when she was giving instructions to her secretary to type up a long letter for Harry to take home to his aunt and uncle, or any other clerical duty, it was always "Miss Powers" this and "Miss Powers" that.

He stared; if he'd been passing Pip Powers on the street, he would have thought her rather tarty. He never remembered her looking that way in the school. He didn't really remember much about her appearance at all, but the one time he remembered meeting her eye while he waited she was smirking with barely-concealed amusement, so he never looked her in the eye again. He had developed an early distaste for being laughed at.

She was doing it again, as far as he was concerned, and he felt an instinctive dislike as she continued speaking. Adults who laughed at children were just—he had no words for how _wrong_ this was. Adults were supposed to be above all that. He remembered the time Ripper had chased him up the tree, the way the Dursleys had laughed and laughed. _That's_ what sort of person she is, he thought. _A Dursleyish person._ He could think of no worse epithet for someone without involving Snape or Umbridge.

"Come on, then! Guess, guess!"

Tilda Harrison looked at her as though she'd gone mad. "We _are_ talking about Greater Whinging primary, Pip. It would take less time to list which kids in recent years _haven't_ had a brush with the law."

"Oh, come on, _think_. You last taught him, let's see, five years ago, I think. He has a prat of a cousin, big as a house—"

Miss Harrison's eyes widened. "Dudley Dursley blew up his house?"

Pip huffed with exasperation. "No, Harry Potter did!"

"Oh," Tilda said, blinking. "I thought you said he was as big as a house."

"No, I meant the cousin is as big as—anyway, that's beside the point. Harry Potter has blown up his house! With his family in it! They've all been taken to hospital and the police are looking for him."

Tilda Harrison's jaw dropped. "I don't believe it. Harry would _never_ do that sort of thing."

Pip nodded, ripping off a chunk of French bread from the loaf. "Believe it. After all, he does go to St Brutus's now. Of course, they had the headmaster on the news and he denied ever hearing of Harry. God forbid he should take any responsibility for teaching him to be a homicidal maniac. Those places really only teach boys how to be better, more efficient criminals."

"That's not true! Ralph Majors did very well when he went to St Brutus's. He's a milkman now," she added, though it seemed to Harry that this was a rather feeble defence of St Brutus's. "He's not a homicidal maniac! Don't be ridiculous, Pip. This is Harry Potter we're talking about." She shook her head. "Not that I'd exactly _blame_ him if living with the Dursleys _had_ finally made him crack, mind you."

"See! There's a way he could have done it! It also turns out that his godfather is a bit dodgy. He's that bloke who escaped from prison a few years back. Can't remember his name now. And of course, when they got Scotland Yard on the phone during the news, they just said 'no comment' about why they'd stopped looking for him."

"For Harry? But you just said—"

"No! Try to pay attention. They stopped looking for his godfather, the fugitive. Scotland Yard won't say why. Well, if they do as good a job at finding Potter, he'll turn up— _never_."

" _Harry,_ " Miss Harrison said, making him look down, checking to make sure his Cloak was still covering him; then he realised that she wasn't addressing him, she was correcting Pip, who had called him "Potter."

He hadn't really noticed anything out of the ordinary. Pip Powers had said it to him often enough when doing her job. He was used to it. " _Potter_ , the headmistress will see you now," he'd heard her say far too often for his liking. " _Potter_ , you're to give this letter to your aunt and uncle."

Pip snorted. "Oh, I forgot. _Harry_ can do no wrong."

"I didn't say that! I just—" Harry stared at Miss Harrison as she sputtered in frustration, trying to find the right words. _Harry can do no wrong._ Had she said that to Pip at some point? She'd certainly never said it to _him._

"You're just cross because all of that time you spent ranting at Old Soberley about how _nothing_ he did was his fault was all for nothing. He's just like the others, Til. A little criminal in the making."

Tilda Harrison took hold of her friend's hands and pulled her off the work surface and into a standing position. Pip made an awkward landing, grunting in pain when she twisted her ankle slightly.

"I think you should leave, Pip." Tilda was breathing quickly. "Before one of us says something that prevents us from continuing on as friends."

Pip dropped her jaw. "You're not serious. You _still_ don't think he's done anything wrong?"

"Have you ever heard of innocent until proven guilty?" Tilda demanded, turning a bit pink. "My dad had that conviction for breaking and entering follow him around for _thirty years._ Those rich snobs couldn't see how it was anything but an inside job, the handy-man _had_ to have stolen their silver because there was no sign of a forced entry and Dad was the one who'd hung the doors and keyed the locks. Never mind that their son had developed a gambling problem and had blown fifty thousand pounds on horse races. Oh, _he_ couldn't have taken his parents' antique silver to sell, _could_ he? Not with _his_ fine breeding."

"Just because your dad was falsely accused forty years ago doesn't mean every other criminal on the planet is innocent, Tilda."

"No, it just means that everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt and a proper trial and all that." Tilda crossed her arms and glared at her friend. "So. Unless you're about to tell me you've changed your mind about Harry, you were just leaving."

Pip threw up her hands and picked up a handbag from the kitchen counter. "Fine, have it your way. I'm leaving. Ring me when you decide to live in the real world again," she added acidly.

Harry watched her leave the kitchen in a huff. The front door opened noisily and then slammed. Tilda Harrison remained where she was, gripping the kitchen worktop with white knuckles, her jaw clenched. "Oh, bloody hell," she muttered, striding into the hall. Harry followed her as quietly as he could; she had gone into the living room and when he had finally made his very slow way into the room himself, he found her slouched on a large overstuffed couch, pointing a remote control at the television, apparently looking for more news about _him._

Though he'd been on his feet for quite a while, he didn't attempt to sit; instead, he stood behind the couch, watching the television with her. She went past comedies, costume dramas and game shows before finding a channel giving the late-breaking news about _Terror in Surrey_ , according to the lurid red legend scrolling along the bottom of the screen while the reporter he'd seen earlier stood before what he recognized as the hospital in Harrington. She was speaking very rapidly into her microphone and looking gravely concerned.

" _At this hour the condition of all of the Dursleys and Mrs Martin are critical but hopeful_ ," the reporter said, making Harry frown.

"Their condition is hopeful?" Tilda Harrison asked the television, snorting. Harry tried not to laugh at the idea that she couldn't resist correcting the reporter's English, even though she couldn't be heard. Then he realised that it sounded like everyone was going to pull through and he heaved a silent sigh of relief.

" _The police manhunt—or rather, boyhunt—has not resulted in Potter's arrest as of yet._ " Suddenly a large drawing that was ostensibly of Harry filed the upper right-hand corner of the screen; it was labelled _Harry James Potter._ " _But someone attempting to provide Potter with an alibi_ has _turned up at the Greater Whinging police station_."

The camera view switched to some footage that appeared to have been recorded a little earlier; Harry had forgotten about Gary, but there he was, in all of his post-football glory, scars, black eye and all. To Harry's chagrin, he didn't look like the sort of person he'd want to be vouching for him. Gary appeared to have been run over by several large lorries.

"Yeah, see, I don't understand how anyone could say it was Harry who done this. I was talking to him in The Bartered Bull in New Stokington." He turned away from the reporter and faced the camera head on. "Sadie! I got it right! Oi! _Bartered Bull!_ " he howled, punching the air with his fist. Turning back to the reporter, he went on as though nothing had happened. "So there he is, eating bacon sarnies at the bar—all of my mates will tell you the same, and so will Sadie, the barmaid—and then the report came on the telly with you telling the world Harry had blown up his house! Well, _I_ think it was a frame-up. Someone who didn't like Harry—or his family—must have known he wasn't there when they did this. That's what _I_ think." He turned and nodded emphatically at the camera, as though that settled it. The view switched back to the live feed in front of Harrington Hospital.

"Police have taken Mr Sellar's statement but also, evidently, felt compelled to give Mr Sellar a breath test, finding that he had been driving under the influence of alcohol."

Harry groaned inwardly. _That's right. Come to think of it, I was rather lucky he didn't crash the car when I was riding in the boot._ He shuddered; he hadn't given a thought to how much Gary had had to drink. And now the police probably thought he'd imagined talking to Harry. The reporter didn't seem to think much of his eyewitness testimony, either.

After giving a physical description of Harry that was a bit off—several inches too short, his weight a couple of years out of date and not a single correct detail about his clothes—she signed off, "This is Greta Lockwax, Harrington, Surrey." Exhaling, Tilda Harrison turned off the television and threw her head back, staring at the ceiling.

" _Oh, Harry, what have you done now_?" she whispered.

#/#/#

Severus Snape tapped his long fingers impatiently on the arm of the chair in which he was sitting. Nearby, Remus Lupin was poking his finger at one of Dumbledore's strange whirring instruments. A burning smell met Snape's nostrils and he turned from contemplating the former headmasters and headmistresses, slumbering in their frames, to Lupin, who was now sucking on one of his fingers.

"It's real silver?" Snape said simply.

Remus Lupin nodded, continuing to suck nonchalantly on his finger.

"Burnt?"

"A little," Lupin managed to say around his finger. "I'll be all right; don't worry about me."

"I wasn't," Snape said truthfully. He was impatient waiting for so long and felt better able to manage on his own. "I can meet with the Headmaster if you like and then report back at Headquarters. You should continue to monitor Macnair."

Remus Lupin shook his head. "No need to go anywhere to do that. I replaced the middle button on his robes with a Third Eye." He removed what appeared to be a large black button from his pocket and held it up. "I've got the other one here. Let's see." He held it tightly in his hand and closed his eyes. "He's just brushing his teeth in his pyjamas. And now he's walking to his bed. He has a dog. I didn't know Macnair had a dog. He doesn't actually seem to _like_ animals; takes entirely too much pleasure in killing them. Ah, I see what it is; not a dog, but a Krup. Well, since Krups don't like Muggles, that makes a bit more sense now, doesn't it?" He silently 'watched' the Death Eater for another minute. "Macnair's tucked up for the night," he finally said. "We needn't worry about him. What happened when you went to report?"

"We learned that the Dark Lord himself had not gone to Privet Drive but the Lestranges had, all three of them, plus some others, all using Polyjuice Potion to appear to be law-abiding Ministry employees. He is not as pleased with them as you might think, however. We have all been told that we are to retrieve Potter if we find that we can penetrate the barrier. It was Rodolphus's idea to attack the house and then demand that Potter come out if he wished it to stop. He did not come out, so they escalated it; then they began to be attacked by an unseen assailant."

"Tonks," Remus said, nodding and smiling. "She has nerve, that girl."

Severus Snape looked grim. "Yes. Tonks. They thought that perhaps it was Potter in _his_ Invisibility Cloak. She should have known better than to try to take on so many of them while encumbered by the Cloak," he added. When the werewolf did not appear inclined to defend her strategy, he continued. "She was disabled by a spell fired in the general direction of where she was, which stopped the attack, of course, but I believe she must have managed to drag herself well away from the Lestranges and their accomplices, for they found no one after some searching. The attack did not go as they had hoped, so they left the house burning with Potter's family inside. They did _not_ immediately report to the Dark Lord, however, as they did not have the good news he sought. One of their number evidently had Apparated to him to tell him that the rest of them were going through the barrier to Potter's house. He expected to have Potter delivered to him after that."

"So, the Lestranges aren't exactly his favourite people at the moment?" Remus said hopefully.

"So it would seem," Severus agreed. He breathed quickly through his nose. "I don't know why Dumbledore didn't try harder to convince Fudge to keep them _all_ in custody. There they were, caught like fish in a net, and now they are all running about loose again."

"Well, Jugson's not running about loose. He's been in hospital now for, what, a month? They still can't seem to work out a way to deal with his head. Still looks like a little baby. Bellatrix Lestrange was never captured, of course, so if we ever get our hands on her again, she's for the drop. And Rookwood and Avery didn't get off, either."

"It was all calculated," Snape said. "I know Malfoy. He said he'd put the others under Imperius so that they'd have their freedom, so they'd still be able to serve the Dark Lord."

"Of course he did. But the Ministry couldn't prove he _hadn't_ put them under Imperius, and he was basically confessing to having committed even more crimes than we knew about, so their hands were tied. It wasn't as though the _Death Eaters_ claimed they were under Imperius in order to get off; _Malfoy_ took the fall for them."

"And he has his friends Rookwood and Avery to hand when he gets ready to break out of Azkaban, probably with the help of the Lestranges," Snape grumbled; he rather felt like knocking the delicate-looking silver instruments across the room. Just when it seemed that the Death Eaters who'd infiltrated the Ministry on the night Black had been killed by his cousin were dealt with, most of them had been let go. "Perhaps Fudge is _really_ the one Malfoy has put under Imperius," he said, thinking aloud.

Lupin shook his head. "Dumbledore has said he'd know if the Minister was under Imperius. No, he's just misguided in this, as in many things. But Dumbledore made sure one of _us_ was monitoring each one of _them_ from the second they were released so we'll know what all of them are up to. Who was monitoring Rodolphus and Rabastan?"

Severus looked grim. "Mundungus Fletcher and Kingsley Shacklebolt are supposed to have those two, but I don't know who's handling Shacklebolt's assignment while he's on Azkaban duty."

Remus nodded sadly. "Dumbledore's not going to be very pleased with Dung or with Shacklebolt's replacement, I'm afraid. Looks like it's quite the night for people to be dressed down, whether by Albus or Voldemort."

Snape hissed instinctively. "Don't say that!" he growled at Lupin.

Remus grinned at him. "Sorry, but you'll have to get used to it. And remember, Albus prefers it."

"Actually," Snape corrected him, "lately, the Headmaster seems to favour calling him 'Tom.'"

Lupin nodded. "True, true. I've heard him use that often." He stood and paced nervously. "I feel like we should be _out there_ , trying to track down Harry. But where to start?"

Suddenly the door opened and Albus Dumbledore entered. He smiled ruefully at the two men waiting for him in his office.

"Ah, Molly. Remus and Severus have beaten us here, it seems," he said to the person behind him. To Severus Snape's surprise, Molly Weasley followed Dumbledore into the office; she was sniffing into a handkerchief and her eyes were red-rimmed.

"Remus, Severus," she said politely, nodding at them, but her voice had no conviction to it; she was just going through the motions.

Remus Lupin guided her to the chair where he'd been sitting before waving his wand and conjuring another for himself. "Here, Molly, you rest. I'm sure you're worried sick about Harry, we all are." He looked pointedly at Snape, who raised his eyebrows.

"Headmaster," he said to Dumbledore, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Lupin's blanket statement; "do we know why the spell failed?"

Dumbledore sat behind his desk and steepled his fingers, looking thoughtful. "Yes, Severus, I believe we do know."

After a pregnant pause, Severus demanded, "Well?"

"You see, a young man turned up at the local police station to speak on Harry's behalf. It seemed that he'd been in a pub in a town known as New Stokington and was speaking to Harry when a report appeared on the television in the pub concerning the attack on Privet Drive."

"Yes," Severus said, growing impatient; "we know Potter left his house. What we don't know is—"

"—what I am about to tell you Severus, if you would please display some patience," Dumbledore said, his voice less gentle. Chastened, Snape clamped his mouth shut and nodded at Dumbledore. "As I was saying, this young man was speaking to Harry in the pub. And he asked him was where he was from."

Remus shrugged. "Why should that be a problem? I'm sure that when Harry told him, this bloke didn't send the Death Eaters over there."

"No, because Harry did not say that he lived on Privet Drive in Surrey. He said that he lived on Grimmauld Place in London."

Molly spoke, her hand on her chest and tears in her eyes. "Bless him, of _course_ he thinks of that as his home, it was Sirius's home."

Dumbledore shook his head. "Unfortunately, Molly, that was the worst possible thing Harry could have said, and chances are that he was thinking it as well."

Snape frowned. " _That_ is why the spell failed? I do not understand," he said with some effort, not meeting Molly's or Remus's eyes.

Dumbledore sighed; "Let me explain to you all how this ancient magic works."

When he was done, they all looked apprehensively at each other. "And that's all he had protecting him?" Molly said, clearly incensed.

"Yes, Molly, that is all. It meant that Voldemort—or any witch or wizard with evil intentions—would not be able to come close enough to Harry to harm him. Unfortunately for Harry, it did not protect him from his cousin while he was growing up, and we discovered last year, of course, that it does not offer protection from Dementors."

Remus sighed. "Do you mind my asking, Albus, how we are to continue monitoring the Death Eaters who were released because of Lucius Malfoy's testimony and also look for Harry?"

"The Dark Lord still finds it laughably easy to penetrate Potter's mind," Severus said, less concerned about Harry's safety than the danger he represented to those around him. " _He_ is likely to find him before we do, and then we shall all be obliged to put memory charms on dozens of Muggles."

Dumbledore shook his head. "Not at all, Severus. And while you may technically be right about Harry having failed to master Occlumency, I have decided that that is all right and even useful."

Snape made a face. "His _failure_ is _useful_?" he sneered.

"Yes. You see, Severus, when we were at the Ministry, Tom managed to penetrate Harry's mind, to possess him. He hoped to get me to kill Harry while he was possessed. What he didn't count on were Harry's thoughts, Harry's _feelings_ in response to that. Thoughts of love, feelings of deepest affection for Sirius, something that Tom finds utterly abhorrent. He doesn't want to experience that again soon, Tom doesn't. So I believe that Tom attempting to enter Harry's mind again is the least of our worries at the present."

Molly cleared her throat. "All right, Albus, do you mind if I ask what the _greatest_ of our worries is?"

He sighed. "That Harry won't realise that he is in the safest possible place he can be right now and just stay put."

Molly sat on the edge of her seat. "Safe? How can you be sure he's _safe_? Oh, I wish it were _my_ duty to monitor the Lestranges instead of that layabout Mundungus Fletcher."

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows at her but did not alter the casual tone of his voice. "I have my ways of knowing about Harry, always have done. He is fine for the moment and no one—I mean _no one_ —" he added, looking particularly at Molly; "—is to try to contact him. He is in a Muggle area where owls would rather stand out. Anyone looking for post owls would know a wizard was present. Barring anyone sending him post, he is perfectly safe at the moment."

"So _do_ you or _don't_ you know where he is?" Molly asked belligerently.

"Not technically, no. I have but a general idea; that is sufficient for now. I am monitoring Harry using one of my favourite devices," he said, pointing at a peculiar spinning wheel that was moving so fast its silver spokes were a blur. "He is sleeping on a couch, and he appears to be wearing his Invisibility Cloak, which cannot fool this particular device. He is in what I believe is a Muggle house. Because of this device I knew that Harry was safe when he left his home in a flying car," he said, his eyes twinkling at Molly, "and because of another device I have that tells me when the ancient magic is at risk I knew that his uncle had threatened to throw him out, last summer. That is why I immediately sent him a letter telling him to stay in the house. If he had set one foot outside the door, well, the spell would have been nullified before he had reached the pavement."

"Then why didn't you know the ancient magic might fail this time?" she said, a slightly accusatory tone in her voice.

He sighed. "His uncle threatened to throw him out last year. That meant that his being able to call his aunt's home _his_ home was at risk. It was rather clear-cut. However, he _can_ leave his house for short periods of time without there being any alarm. Harry's intention is a large part of it; because this device—" He pointed at the one that had burnt Lupin earlier; "—did not tell me that there was a risk of the spell being nullified when he left the house, that means that at the time, Harry fully intended to return. I just came from speaking to Tonks in the hospital wing, where Poppy is taking good care of her. You found her in the upstairs hall because, even injured as she was, after the Death Eaters left she took it on herself to find Harry's room and learn whether he had planned to run away. She says that none of Harry's clothes appeared to be missing, his broom was still in his bedroom, his trunk and all of his schoolbooks. Of course, she pushed herself too hard and collapsed in the hall after she had learnt this, but I do think she has done an exemplary job under quite difficult circumstances. Fortunately, her injuries should heal quickly." He nodded at Mrs Weasley. "Harry is safe, Molly. We now have work to do to ensure that he _stays_ safe."

Molly straightened up. "Yes, Albus. Whatever you say," she added; Remus looked at her as though he doubted her sincerity. Severus strongly suspected that she wanted to give Mundungus Fletcher quite a dressing down; he rather wished he could do this himself, but in his experience, anything he said to Fletcher was like water off a duck's back. It was more productive to speak to a brick wall.

"Thank you, Molly. Now, before we started rotations of guards outside the Department of Mysteries last year, I did reveal to you all that Sybill gave a prophecy many years ago concerning Harry and Tom. What I did not tell any of you—and what I know you've all been champing at the bit to know—is what the prophecy actually says. For that I will require my Pensieve."

Severus was shocked when the image of a younger Sybill Trelawney rose from the silvery substance in the stone bowl, her eerily magnified eyes unblinking as the misty voice pronounced the words of the prophecy that concerned them all. Molly Weasley covered her mouth with her hand and Remus's fingers tightened on the arms of his chair, his knuckles turning white. Afterward, Dumbledore put the Pensieve away and sat in his chair again.

"One of them is to kill the other," Remus said softly. "Why didn't you say anything before?"

Dumbledore sighed. "I believe that I have made more than a few mistakes in this matter, Remus, and after the debacle at the Ministry last month, I suspect that perhaps the greatest mistake has been to continue to keep the true content of the prophecy from Tom, as well as Harry. Harry now knows about it; if _Tom_ knew what it said, then there would have been no need for him to try to get it from the Department of Mysteries. He knew only a part before; he knew that the one with the power to vanquish him would be born at the end of July, and that the parents had defied him three times. He did not know that he would mark his opponent, nor that this other wizard would have power Tom does not. He certainly did not know that one of them must die at the hand of the other. It is this last part of the prophecy that I wish to be more widely known, especially by Tom himself."

Molly was aghast. "What? He's sure to go after Harry as soon as he can, knowing that."

Dumbledore shook his head. "Not at all. Now, I grant you, Tom thought he had every right last year to expect that, surrounded by his Death Eaters, with Harry tied up and disarmed, he should be able to kill him. Had Tom known about this part of the prophecy, however, I doubt he would have done what he did: he untied Harry, gave him his wand, and started duelling with him, demanding that the Death Eaters refrain from interfering, although when Harry was making his getaway they did not refrain. You see, Tom does not like even odds. He of course considered the odds that day to be in his favour. And despite his telling his Death Eaters not to interfere, he knew that they _would_ , if necessary. He has them well trained. However, I strongly believe that the prophecy is saying that Harry and Tom are the only risks each of them has at this time. For example, Tom tried to taunt me for not attempting to kill him at the Ministry; I know that is not my role to play, however, just as Death Eaters, if I understand the prophecy correctly, are not likely to bring about Harry's demise, either. Only Tom has that power.

"Speaking of power, I also want it to be widely disseminated that Harry has power Tom does not. It's true, after all. Coupled with the knowledge that he and Harry must each kill or be killed by the other, and the excruciating experience he had the last time he possessed Harry, I expect this to mean that Tom stays far away from Harry until such time as he feels he has a quick, foolproof way of killing him. If one of them is to kill the other, those are even odds, and Tom does _not_ like even odds, as I said before. He likes a sure thing. He will regroup. The close monitoring we were doing of the released Death Eaters means that—in theory," he added, nodding at Molly, "we will be aware of anything he has planned almost before _he_ is." Severus assumed that the headmaster had received an earful from Molly Weasley about Mundungus Fletcher. "And we have your invaluable assistance as well, Severus," Dumbledore said, nodding at him. "Trust me, the best thing we can do right now is to let the lines of communication spread the truth of the prophecy and let Harry stay safely where he is."

"How will you do that, Headmaster?" Snape wanted to know.

"Oh, in the usual way, in the usual way," Dumbledore answered in his typical vague manner, waving his hands randomly.

"What if the Muggle police find out where he is, though? They think he blew up his own house," Remus said, frowning.

"I have taken care of that, Remus. Soon the Muggle police shall not even remember that anything out of the ordinary occurred on Privet Drive. I agree that it would be rather inconvenient for the police to be involved in this; if Harry were apprehended and it became known that he was in a Muggle prison, Voldemort could get to him there quite quickly and easily."

"Oh, why can't we just fetch him back to Headquarters?" Molly said, wringing her hands.

"Because to do so, we would have to draw attention to his current location. The advantage he had before was that, though his location was easy to learn, it was impossible for anyone intending him ill to actually reach him. Now it is possible for someone with evil intentions to reach him—but his whereabouts are unknown. That is now his protection. When he was escorted from Surrey to London last year, he was at least able to begin the journey in safety; once he was well away from his home the guard we sent to accompany him was quite necessary. I will put my mind to using the subtlest methods possible to pinpoint his exact location, so that I can put some protective spells on the place. Then he will have that _and_ secrecy to protect him. Should his location cease to be a secret, it would, of course, be prudent to bring him back to Headquarters as quickly as possible, even with any additional protection I may manage to give him.

"Now, if you will all excuse me, I must speak to someone about publicising the prophecy."

The three of them exchanged nervous glances; Severus could tell that neither Remus nor Molly was convinced about the wisdom of this path, although he did have ample evidence, in his close observation of the Dark Lord, supporting the assertion that he did not care for anything but sure victory; if there was a fifty percent chance that Potter would be the one killing _him_ , instead of the other way round, he would be putting all of his effort into making the odds far more lopsided in his favour.

#/#/#

When he was once more alone in his office, Dumbledore nodded at Fawkes. "You may fetch him now."

There was a flash of fire and the bird disappeared; a few minutes later another flash of fire accompanied the phoenix's return. His passenger let go of Fawkes's tail feathers and brushed down his robes, looking expectantly at Dumbledore.

"Tell me what you want me to do."

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	5. Haunted

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Five**

 **Haunted**

 **#/#/#**

Harry stood at Tilda Harrison's kitchen window, checking Mrs Figg's house for what seemed the millionth time. He pushed his glasses up on his face and rubbed his dry, burning eyes, staring at the house again afterward. The strange wizards who had positioned themselves at her front and back doors showed no sign of their vigilance flagging. They were too stiff and proper to be members of the Order; he had every confidence that if he went to Mrs Figg's house, even in his Invisibility Cloak, he'd be apprehended by the Ministry immediately and probably lose his wand soon after.

Someone at the Ministry had obviously remembered her involvement in his case the previous summer and assumed that he would take shelter with her, or try to get in touch with Dumbledore through her. He understood now why Dumbledore had told him not to surrender his wand the previous summer. Somehow, he'd hoped to feel better about the Ministry now that the return of Voldemort was being acknowledged. If anything, seeing the wizards outside Mrs Figg's house made him feel worse about it.

He _had_ to contact Dumbledore somehow and prove his innocence, but he didn't know how to do it without being taken into custody. He still didn't trust the Ministry in general; Fudge had been too close to Lucius Malfoy, and Harry didn't want to know how easily Voldemort could get to him in Ministry custody with the aid of a Death Eater who happened to be employed by the Ministry. _Why not just run through Trafalgar Square screaming, 'Come and get me, Voldemort!'_ he thought.

Finally deciding that he needed sleep, he crept upstairs to check on Miss Harrison. (He almost thought of her as Tilda now, but not all the time.) It was two o'clock; she had gone upstairs about two hours earlier, but he wanted to make certain she was asleep before daring to sleep himself. As he neared the top of the stairs he heard what sounded like his uncle snoring. When he reached the landing, he found that her bedroom door was open a crack, and in the light shining in the window from the street lamp he saw her lying in the middle of a large bed wearing what appeared to be a man's shirt, her arm flung over her head and her mouth open, emitting the snores he'd heard. He clamped his mouth shut to avoid laughing and crept down to the lounge, where he tried to curl into a small ball on the couch with the Cloak covering him thoroughly.

He was certain at first that he would not be able to sleep at all for worrying about how the Dursleys were; he wasn't terrifically reassured by the news. Then there was worrying about being expelled from Hogwarts and possibly being arrested by the Muggle police. He also wondered how soon Voldemort would work out where he was, in which case he'd have to surrender immediately if there was a chance that he might try to hurt Miss Harrison or Mrs Figg.

And why hadn't he heard from Dumbledore? The previous summer, soon after his uncle told him he didn't want him living with them anymore, there was a barrage of owls, and even the howler for his aunt. This time—nothing. Did Dumbledore think he'd died in the attack? Perhaps he'd given up on him and decided that there was no helping him anymore and he deserved to be expelled for what he'd done. _Well,_ Harry thought ruefully, _I certainly have made a mess of things._

For once the thoughts swirling around his head did not turn into dreams and his scar didn't hurt once. He fell asleep quickly, and if he had dreams during the night he didn't remember them in the morning. Just before seven, the sound of clanking glass bottles woke him with a start. He looked around Tilda Harrison's lounge in utter confusion. _Must be the milkman,_ he thought, finally remembering where he was.

He hadn't bothered to take off his glasses; he hadn't expected to be able to sleep. Instead they'd fallen off and he'd rolled over on them. When he put them on they sat at a rakish angle, as though his left ear were three inches above his right, like the drawing of Harry on Dudley's punching bag. He swore under his breath before noticing the Invisibility Cloak in a silvery puddle on the floor. He swore softly again and hurriedly pulled it on, no longer caring about his glasses. When he was thoroughly covered he checked his watch; in less than a minute it would be seven.

He walked quietly down the corridor to the lavatory, near the garage door. Before he started having Voldemort-induced dreams at night, each morning, like clockwork, his body woke him at seven to use the loo. It was an enormous relief to have had a good night's sleep, dream-free as far as he could tell, and to wake feeling refreshed (if a little stiff). Strange that it should have been the result of sleeping on a rather lumpy couch. The only time in recent memory that he hadn't minded feeling too tired to get up at seven was when the exhaustion was due to a vigorous Quidditch practice or match the day before. _And now I have a life-time ban._

He shook himself, trying to get rid of this thought. _I might really have a lifetime ban,_ he thought, _if I'm expelled and my wand is broken._ He wondered briefly whether his broom had survived the attack on the house, then tried _not_ to think about it as he realised that he should care more about his relatives than his broom. The problem was—he didn't. His broom was far more important to him. This depressed him all over again.

He sighed and prepared to flush the toilet, trying to push this thought from his brain. He froze, however, as he realised that this could make rather a lot of noise. On Privet Drive a toilet flush could be heard all over the house. He went through the kitchen and front hall again, creeping quietly up the stairs so he could find out whether she was still asleep.

Harry almost fell down the stairs in shock when he reached the top and she started walking straight toward him wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around her body. She turned abruptly and entered what Harry could see was the upstairs bath and he sighed in relief when she closed the door. A few seconds later he heard the shower. It was perfect; she was making far too much noise now to hear him. He returned to the downstairs lavatory and flushed, confident that she would never know he was in the house.

He immediately heard a terrified and angry cry from above.

Harry winced, remembering belatedly that she was in the _shower_ and could be burnt by someone suddenly flushing a toilet. Then, to his horror, after the bowl had emptied and was filling with clean water, it didn't stop. It kept going and going and—

Harry ran from the room in a panic, slamming the lavatory door behind him. His trainers squelched with water at every step. _Damn damn damn._ He didn't know whether he'd broken the toilet or it was already broken. Either way, this would be _certain_ to draw her attention. Sure enough, he heard footsteps pounding on the stairs; he raced down the corridor to the kitchen, so he wouldn't be trapped in the dead-end hall leaving to the lav.

Tilda Harrison was a sight. Her dirty blonde hair was sopping wet on one side and covered in shampoo on the other. It seemed that she'd been rinsing her hair when Harry had flushed. Her pale, freckled arms and shoulders bore scattered water droplets; with white knuckles, she clutched the large pale blue towel that swathed her body as she strode angrily through the kitchen, wet feet slapping noisily on the lino.

Harry was not surprised about the stream of swear words emanating from the lavatory. He heard squeaking, like someone turning a slightly rusty crank, and soon the sound of running water had ceased. _She turned off the water supply to the toilet. I should have thought of that._ She slap-slapped into the kitchen again, bending over to take rags from the cupboard beneath the sink before returning to the lavatory with the rags, presumably to mop up the water.

He retreated to the lounge, feeling guilty about interrupting her shower and causing her extra work first thing in the morning. _How am I going to do a simple thing like use the toilet if the one down here is broken?_ he wondered. Clearly this was also the time of day she liked to shower. _Dumbledore had better find me soon,_ he thought. _Or those damn Aurors had better leave Mrs Figg's._

He paced nervously, trying to work out how long he should stay in the house, whether he should just leave _now_ to try to find a way to contact Dumbledore, or whether it was worth it to try to get past the Aurors in his Cloak. He couldn't very well _walk_ to London; it had been risky enough taking the bus to New Stokington. Mrs Figg was his best bet—if only _the sodding Aurors would go away_.

A gasp behind him made him jump for a second. Miss Harrison stood in the doorway to the lounge, looking at the carpet where he was pacing; Harry looked down, groaning inwardly. On the intricately-detailed Persian carpet were the very clear imprints of damp trainers. He swallowed and looked up at Miss Harrison, at a loss.

Her soapy hair had started to congeal into a solid mass, while her rinsed hair clung to her skull in a heavy, damp, unmoving curtain of pale brown. _Reason number one why you should never be permitted in your teacher's home,_ Harry thought ruefully. _You really don't want to see her with congealed shampoo in her hair._

"D—Dad?" she whispered, which was the last thing he was expecting. "Dad, is that you? Did you do the toilet? Were you—were you trying to get my attention?"

Harry didn't know what to do. She seemed to think she had a haunted toilet. _If you want to see someone haunt a toilet,_ he thought, _you should see Moaning Myrtle._ He started to laugh at the thought, then bit his lip to avoid making any sound. He also realised that she definitely should _not_ see Moaning Myrtle, or anything else magical. _Would they charge me for violating the Secrecy law if a Muggle found out about my Cloak?_ he wondered. He didn't move but waited to hear what she would say next. If she seemed like she was moving too close to him, he'd back up as needed.

"Daddy," she said now, sounding like such a forlorn little girl that Harry was embarrassed for her; "Daddy, if that's you, could you please tell me?" She wrung her hands together and he saw a tear slide down her cheek, though it could have been water from her hair. "What do they do in séances?" she mumbled, before looking in Harry's general direction. "Oh, yes! They knock. All right, Dad. If it's you, please knock once for _yes_. If you're someone else, knock three times for _no_."

Harry looked about for something to knock on and practically backed up into a low wooden table he decided would do. Just before he bent over to knock through the Cloak, he realised that he didn't know whether he should answer truthfully. What would be most likely to keep her away from him?

Looking at her hopeful face, he decided, and gave the wooden table one loud, solid rap. She beamed in his general direction, which was unnerving Harry, who was accustomed to being invisible to everyone but Moody in his Cloak.

"Oh, Daddy," she sobbed, making Harry wish he'd added two more raps; it seemed a bit late now. "I can't believe it! Were you—were you trying to fix the toilet? I was going to get Jack to do it. He's visiting next week. You know how incompetent I am about things like that. You only let me handle things like carpentry," she said, laughing through her tears. "I was always bloody useless with plumbing."

 _So,_ Harry thought. _It was already broken._ At least _he_ hadn't broken it. _You could have put a sign on it,_ he thought crossly, but he remembered that she lived alone. _Who's Jack?_ he wondered.

He rapped three times in quick succession, to indicate—truthfully, this time—that he hadn't been trying to fix the toilet. Evidently, Muggles didn't know that only witches and wizards became ghosts. Of course, they didn't _know_ about witches and wizards, and he hadn't known about this himself until Nearly Headless Nick had told him.

She continued to stand in the doorway, clutching her towel around her. "Did you come for some other reason?" Thinking about it for only a second, he rapped once again, for _yes_.

She bit her lip and looked up at the ceiling, then back to the table Harry had been striking. "Is it—is it because I'm selling your old things?" she asked quietly, looking like she feared the answer. Harry wanted to reassure her, so he rapped three times on the table for _no_. Let her sell the stuff, he thought; even if her father _would_ have objected, once you're dead you shouldn't be worrying about _things_ , he felt.

She looked perplexed when she heard him rap three times. "Then why are you here?" she asked, her mystified eyes wide, and Harry realised suddenly who she'd reminded him of since the first moment he'd seen her in the garage. Radish earrings and a hat with a life-sized lion's head on it would just top it off. However, the similarity was mainly colouring, he decided; while she looked a great deal like an older Luna Lovegood, she lacked the vacant expression. He couldn't help staring; it was as though he'd taken a Time Turner into the future rather than the past, seeing Luna as she might be in fifteen or sixteen years' time.

"Are you here to—to help me in some way?"

Harry hesitated for a moment, then rapped the table once.

She sat in a chair, pushing her damp hair out of her eyes. "I miss you so much, Daddy," she said softly. "Audrey and Nick are all right. Audrey misses you too, and Nick is so wonderful with her. I know you didn't approve, but if you could only see how happy they are… And you're a grandfather! They—they named him after you. The last name is hyphenated, Harrison-Priestley. That's not so bad, is it? Audrey wishes the two of you could have patched things up before—before—"

 _Audrey must be her sister,_ he decided. _And their dad never approved of her husband, Nick._ Tilda Harrison was crying in earnest, her face red and blotchy, especially her nose. When she turned to the table beside her to find something on which to blow her nose, he quickly pulled off his trainers, as quietly as he could; his socks were relatively dry in comparison, so he could walk without leaving footprints to show where he'd been. While she blew her nose noisily he crept to the stairs and ascended as quietly as he could, his sopping trainers clutched to his chest, quickly soaking his shirt and making him shiver with cold.

Downstairs he heard her saying, in a half-choked-off voice, "Daddy? Are you still here?" It was strange to hear a grown woman speaking this way.

He looked around the upstairs hall, which was a large square space at the top of the stairs. _I'll just go into one of the other bedrooms and hide until she goes out._

He hoped she _would_ go out soon. His stomach felt completely hollow and he feared that it might start to make noise. How would knocking on a wooden table explain a ghost with a rumbling stomach?

Unfortunately, the first door he opened led to a room so overflowing with junk that moving it a few inches was enough to start an avalanche of sound and movement. He slammed it quickly, wincing when the sliding and banging continued. He hoped nothing would break because of him; Miss Harrison seemed determined to sell the things she had stored in the spare bedrooms.

"Daddy?" she called before sprinting up the stairs, still clutching her towel.

 _Damn,_ he thought. He tiptoed carefully into her bedroom, as that seemed safe, then stood behind the door, holding his breath. He could see her through the crack between the door and jamb, her ear to the door of the other room.

"Are you sure you don't mind my selling these things, Daddy?" She frowned as she listened at the door. "You said you were here to help me. Is this helping me? Are you trying to tell me what I should sell?"

Harry shook his head. Sometimes he just couldn't believe how superstitious Muggles were. Even with their magic-phobia, his aunt and uncle were deathly afraid of the number thirteen, black cats, walking under ladders and spilling salt. He watched as Miss Harrison carefully turned the knob and opened the door; everything was quiet for a second, but a moment later a precarious pile of things shifted and something fell into the hall. It was a strange looking machine of some sort, like binoculars with additional fittings. Harry was afraid for a moment that it was a pair of primitive Omnioculars. She picked it up gingerly.

"Is this it, Daddy? Is this what I should sell?"

Harry took a chance; he quickly rapped once on the bedroom door. She whirled in his general direction, making his heart leap into his throat.

"It is?" She smiled. "You _are_ here to help me, aren't you?" Her smile grew. "All right, Daddy. I was going to Petworth and Farnham tomorrow, but I'll go today instead and take the stereoscope as well as the other things."

The _what_? Harry thought.

She laughed and looked down. "If you don't mind now, Daddy, I think I'll finish my shower. Thank you!" she said to the door. Harry wondered whether Old Soberley would continue to employ her if she could see her now, talking to a door and calling it "Daddy."

When he heard the shower again, he heaved a sigh of relief, sitting in a chair near the wardrobe, feeling like he'd never been so nervous in his life. _She'll be going out soon,_ he thought. _Thank goodness._ He was feeling a bit like he could use a shower himself; the amount of nervous sweat he'd produced since he'd made the toilet overflow made him wonder why she hadn't _smelled_ him yet.

When she emerged from the bath this time, she looked much better, wearing a crisp blue cotton dressing gown, her hair dry (no shampoo in it) and neatly pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck. With her hair off her face he thought she looked less like Luna, though the way she'd been conversing with the "ghost" of her father did rather remind him of the dotty things Luna did; he wondered whether she'd ever had conversations with her dead mother. (He didn't think it odd to speak to _ghosts_ , as he did it all the time at Hogwarts, but he did think talking to dead people who _weren't_ ghosts was strange.) Even if Luna's mother _were_ a ghost, Harry imagined such conversations would be very strange, as _all_ conversations with Luna were bound to be strange.

He was jolted back to the present when Miss Harrison suddenly removed her dressing gown, under which she had been wearing nothing at all. Harry widened his eyes, seeing that there were still glistening drops of water running down the center of her back to her—

Harry shut his eyes tightly, feeling a heat rise from his neck. _I should not be seeing this,_ he thought, feeling very guilty. He opened one of his eyes a crack, looking for the door, but she had unfortunately closed it when she'd come in from the hall. _If only I'd been able to hide in one of the other bedrooms._

Out of the corner of his eye he was aware of her moving around, still unclothed. _I should not be seeing this. I should not be seeing this,_ he thought repeatedly, but he was also finding it harder and harder to tear his eyes away. _I wonder if my dad did this,_ he thought. _He was the sort who would spy on the girls, wasn't he? It looks like I'm no better._ He suspected that a stair that turned into a smooth slide would have presented no obstacle to his dad.

Harry squeezed his eyes shut again, this time seeing in his mind's eye his fifteen-year-old father turning Severus Snape upside down. He hadn't found Remus and Sirius's explanations for this very satisfactory, somehow. His dad might have improved later, but at fifteen James Potter was a prat who probably would have been elated to find himself in the bedroom of an attractive woman who was wearing nothing and didn't know he was there.

 _Mum,_ he found himself thinking, not two minutes after deciding that it was strange to talk to dead people who weren't ghosts; _why did you ever marry him?_

#/#/#

Mrs Weasley put down a letter she'd been reading, shaking her head sadly and _tsk_ ing. "Oh, dear. Your Aunt Georgina has lost Uncle Bilius."

Ginny frowned. "How could she lose him when he's already dead?"

"His ashes. Accidentally knocked them into the fire when she was reaching for the Floo powder." Mrs Weasley shook her head. "Did you hear what I said, Ron?"

"Yeah, so?" Ron said absentmindedly as he gazed at the chessboard balanced on his legs. Hermione sat on one side of his hospital bed, Ginny on the other. He was ostensibly playing Hermione but Ginny kept telling her what moves to make, which she could see was making her brother cross. She was glad Hermione had come to number twelve, Grimmauld Place the night before; Ginny missed talking to her. Hermione's parents were at a dentists' conference in Switzerland and it had been arranged—before Draco Malfoy's attack on Ron—that she would come to stay with them at this time anyway. Hermione had fretted that she'd forgotten to tell Harry she'd be staying with them, but Ginny tried to reassure her. She reckoned that this would be the last thing on Harry's mind right now.

"Ron!" his mother and Hermione said simultaneously. Ginny caught his eye and giggled; Ron glared at her.

"You'd think you'd be more interested in your namesake," his mother admonished him.

"He was _Bill's_ namesake, not mine," Ron practically growled, finally making his move. His castle attempted to beat one of Hermione's bishops into submission.

Hermione looked up from the pitched battle between the chess pieces and said, "Bill's name is really _Bilius_?" She looked as though she was finding it very hard not to make a horrid face, glancing at Mrs Weasley out of the corner of her eye. Molly seemed oblivious to Hermione's horror.

"Yes," she said, smiling benignly and nodding at Ron. "And Ron's middle name, as well."

Now Hermione was trying not to laugh, shaking with mirth and averting her eyes from Mrs Weasley. Ron's mouth twisted in displeasure.

"It's not funny," he grumbled.

"I don't know why you're so cross about it," Ginny said, pointing at the piece she thought Hermione should move next.

"Stop helping her!" he finally complained to Ginny.

"I mean," Ginny continued, sitting on her hand so she couldn't point at the pieces again; "you could do worse than to have more things in common with _Bill_."

Hermione made what sounded like a noise of agreement as she moved the pawn Ginny had been pointing at. Ron scowled as it struggled against his own pawn.

"I have things in common with Bill," Ron said defensively, his voice squeaking slightly. Ginny snorted and Hermione smirked; Ron looked deeply offended. "I'm a prefect now! And—and we have the same colour eyes and hair. And—and I'm as tall as he is now."

Mrs Weasley rose and patted Ron on the shoulder. "Of course you are, dear," she said gently. "I'm going to check on Alastor. We're expecting Remus to come and relieve him." Members of the Order were guarding Ron's private room around the clock.

As she left Ron's scowl deepened. When she was gone he screwed up his face. " _Of course you are,_ " he said in a sing-song imitation of his mother.

Ginny snorted again but stopped when she saw Ron's face. Hermione said, "I don't see more than a superficial resemblance between you and Bill. Fleur Delacour very likely doesn't either, since she turned _you_ down for the Ball, but Bill—"

Ron suddenly threw the chessboard across the room, scattering the screaming pieces. "What's _that_ supposed to mean?" His ears were bright red. "I didn't even—I didn't even _want_ to ask her. If it weren't for the whole Veela thing I wouldn't have done. I suppose _now_ you're going to tell me that Viktor Krum is a Veela."

Hermione looked defiant. " _No,_ he is not a Veela."

"So what's _your_ excuse then for why you went to the Ball with _him_?"

"He _asked_ , _that's_ my excuse," Hermione said, growing rather red in the face herself. Ginny picked up the chessboard and the squirming, complaining chess men.

"You know, I think there's a great deal of resemblance between you and Bill," Ginny said, to placate Ron; she remembered how cross he'd been when he'd first stumbled into the common room, still looking dazed from the Veela-effect, having just asked out Fleur Delacour before a crowd of witnesses. She glanced surreptitiously at Ron while continuing to put the chess pieces back in their box.

"Oi! Nobody's been checkmated yet!" a knight cried, but she pushed him down ruthlessly and slammed the box's lid.

"Well, I don't see it," Hermione said archly, sitting on the side of the bed again, as though daring Ron to push her off.

"Of course he looks a lot like Bill. At this point all they'd need to look like twins would be for Ron to grow his hair long and start wearing an earring," Ginny said loyally, though she knew this wasn't _quite_ true.

Hermione grimaced. " _Exactly,_ " she said, surprising Ginny. "And Ron _hasn't_ done that, so he _doesn't_ look like Bill."

Ron bristled, looking like he might push her off the bed after all. "Well, if you think so highly of my brother, I suppose you can try fighting Fleur for him," he spat at her.

She frowned. "Don't be stupid. You don't listen to anything I say, do you?"

"I don't listen to anything _you_ say?" Ron was incredulous. "What about telling you that elves _like_ to work? Do you ever listen to me when I tell you that? _Nooo_. Instead you knit a mountain of ruddy hats and leave them all over the common room. Well, thanks to you—"

" _I'll just check on Mum checking on Moody_ ," Ginny mumbled, rolling her eyes and sidling toward the door as they launched into their row.

"—none of the elves but Dobby want to clean Gryffindor Tower anymore," Ron continued. "All you've done is give Dobby the world's largest collection of really _ugly hats_!"

Hermione looked horrified; she had her hands on her hips and was completely red in the face. "For your information, you _don't_ listen to me when I talk. When I said you don't look like Bill you failed to notice that I never said that was a _bad_ thing. If you had let me finish, I was about to say that I _don't_ think Bill is the better-looking one! So perhaps you should close your mouth and open your ears sometimes!"

Ginny was at the door, her mouth open in shock. Ron looked at Hermione with an equally shocked expression. Suddenly, a hand grasped Ginny around the upper arm and pulled her into the corridor; it was her mother.

"Oh, dear, are they rowing again? You shouldn't stand and gawp at them when they do, Ginny dear." She heaved a great sigh. "I can't believe this is still going on. I had hoped—" Her mother turned pink and shifted her eyes away from her daughter. "Well, you know how fond I am of Hermione. I had hoped, with her and Ron being prefects last year, they _might_ stop rowing. And I even _told_ her on the way here that Ron was calling her name after they first brought him in and he was a bit delirious." She turned a deeper shade of pink and looked sheepishly at Ginny.

Ginny glanced over her shoulder at the door. "Well, you never know, Mum. They might not go on having rows forever. Did you hear what they were saying to each other?"

Her mother shook her head grimly. "All I heard was his voice raised in anger. I don't know how he expects—" She trailed off, shaking her head and patting Ginny's arm. "Thank goodness you're too young for all of that yet."

Ginny swallowed; she hadn't told her mother about Michael Corner. "That's right. No boyfriends here," she said brightly. It was a semi-truthful statement. _None at the moment. Unless Dean—_

"What about Harry?" her mother said softly, raising her eyebrows hopefully.

Ginny grimaced. "Mum, don't—"

"It's just—I thought you fancied him, Ginny."

Ginny felt herself reddening. She glanced at Moody out of the corner of her eye; he seemed to be looking through the wooden door, his non-magical eye widening in surprise.

"Harry and I are just friends, Mum," she said, wishing her mother would talk about something else.

"Hello, Alastor, Molly, Ginny," Remus Lupin said, turning the corner and joining them. Ginny was very grateful to see him. Molly nodded.

"Oh, there you are, Remus. How is poor Tonks?"

"She's improving. Poppy likes having her in the infirmary just a little too much, I think. She's lonely," he said, smiling. "And Arthur's downstairs, Molly. He asked me to send you down for a few minutes."

"Thank you, Remus," she said, sighing and moving toward the lifts. Ginny knew she hadn't slept the night before; her father was already out on Order business, so her mother had gone to Hogwarts to meet with Dumbledore. She'd come back looking very grim before telling Ginny and Hermione a bit about what had happened in Surrey. Ginny hadn't slept either, once she knew that Harry was missing and his house had been blown up. Instead, she and Hermione talked until dawn in their shared bedroom, voicing their worries and trying (unsuccessfully) to reassure each other. It did nothing for their peace of mind, either, that Ron was in St Mungo's.

"Alastor, I know it's my shift, but do you mind staying out here for a moment while I pop in and visit with Ron?" Remus asked.

"It's not a good time," Ginny said quickly. "He and Hermione are rowing."

Moody made a _harrumphing_ noise, making Remus and Ginny stare. "You don't usually see _that_ during a row."

Ginny frowned. "See what?"

"Kissing."

She dropped her jaw. " _Kissing_?" Then she remembered the last thing Hermione had said before she'd left the room. "You—you can see them—"

"Aye," he said gruffly. "Doesn't look like a row to _me_ ," he said pointedly, staring through the door with his magical eye. He rotated it and looked at Ginny without turning his head. "Knock first," he advised her gruffly,

She nodded, rapping on the door. "Come in," Hermione called; she sounded strange to Ginny.

Remus and Ginny found Hermione sitting on Ron's bed again, but Ginny widened her eyes when she saw that Ron was _holding Hermione's hand._ They were both rather flushed but Ginny didn't think that was from the row. She believed Moody. He didn't make up stories.

The hand-holding wasn't lost on Remus either, she could tell, but he didn't comment. "So! How are you feeling?" he asked Ron, pulling up the chair Molly had been using.

Ron released Hermione's hand and ran his fingers through his hair restlessly. "I'd like to get out of here, mostly." Glancing furtively at Hermione, he said, "Rather recover back at Headquarters, if I have a choice."

Remus nodded. "Dumbledore would like you out of here as quickly as possible, too."

Hermione turned to him. "Speaking of which—is there any news about Harry?"

Remus shook his head. "No, but he says Harry's safe and we shouldn't contact him or we'll endanger him."

Ginny's stomach clenched. _He'll be all right. He will._ But the anxious tightness wouldn't leave her, no matter what positive thoughts she tried to force into her brain.

"Oh, I wish I didn't have Hedwig!" Hermione said, wringing her hands. "Then _he_ could at least contact _us_."

"—and lead Voldemort right to him," Remus said, raising his brows. Hermione frowned.

"If anyone can find Harry, it's Dumbledore," Ron said, his voice shaking.

Remus nodded. "Yes. He has his ways, no doubt about that. In the meantime, you concentrate on recovering, Ron. Most of your bones mended now?"

Ron nodded. "Except for my left leg. The thigh bone—"

"Femur," Hermione provided helpfully.

"Yeah. That. Shattered into so many little fragments they just removed it magically. I've been growing it back with _Skele-Gro._ "

Remus made a face. "Ew. Nasty stuff."

"Too right. The Healer said that bone's the biggest—and mine's _particularly_ large—so it has to grow back over a couple of days. Needs about two or three times the dose that you'd use for growing back, say, a small person's arm, like when Harry lost his arm bones because of Lockhart. And I can't take more than one dose per day, so—"

Remus nodded. "Right. I heard once of a witch who took too much at once, after removing her broken arm bones, to have a fresh start." He shook his head at her folly. "Ran an apothecary, thought she knew what she was doing. Now she has arguments with herself all the time. Sometimes I go to that apothecary to buy supplies for Severus to make my potion. The pair of them are so annoying—"

"Pair?" Hermione said, frowning.

Remus cleared his throat. "Yes. She grew another skull after taking too much Skele-Gro. Has an extra arm, too. Some of her brain migrated over into the new skull, so the Healers here didn't dare remove it. She's quite a good organist, though," he added brightly.

"She has two _heads_?" Ginny gasped.

Hermione looked horrified. She stared fearfully at Ron. "It'll take as long as it takes. Let's not rush it," she said in an unnaturally high voice.

Ron nodded vigorously, his eyes wide.

#/#/#

"I know you don't like going to antiques shops with me, but _please_ do it anyway. I don't want to be alone. And if he comes back, you can see that I'm not mad!"

Harry was still stuck in Tilda Harrison's bedroom while she talked on the telephone with her best friend; until she opened the door he didn't dare leave, as opening the door himself would likely make her think the ghost of her father had returned. His damp trainers were still clutched to his chest and the smell of them was assaulting his nostrils; he hoped she wouldn't pick up on the scent.

Tilda heaved a great sigh. "Fine. I promise that if you come with me to Petworth and Farnham I will come out clubbing with you. All right? When can you get here? Okay. I'm not listening Pip. _I'm not._ I'm ringing off now. I am. I am. Yes, I am." Yet she continued to listen to her friend for half a minute longer. Harry could vaguely hear Pip's voice but couldn't make out the words. "I'm ringing off now, Pip," Tilda said again, finally doing as she'd promised, staring at the phone after she'd put it down again. "You bloody bitch," she said in an oddly affectionate tone of voice. They seemed to have patched over their disagreement from the night before. The disagreement about _him_.

She picked up a handbag and opened the bedroom door, not bothering to close it. After he heard her go downstairs he crept out of the bedroom at last, waiting in the upstairs hall. He shifted from foot to foot; his arms ached from holding the trainers.

At last the doorbell rang and from the top of the stairs he saw Tilda Harrison open the door, admitting Pip, who was carrying the milk order.

"He's got it wrong again. How hard is it to understand two bottles of milk and a pot of yogurt? He's given you cottage cheese this time." She thrust the order at Tilda, who took it awkwardly. "All right," she said brightly, "I'm ready for an exciting day driving round to _antiques_ shops." She rolled her eyes. "Are you sure you actually want to sell any of your stuff? Your dad might come back to haunt you again."

"I can tell you don't believe me, Pip, but he was really here!" They left the hall and by pressing himself against the outer wall he could see that they'd entered the lounge. "See? Wet footprints on the carpet!"

"I don't see anything," Pip said sceptically; Harry could see her crouching down and touching the carpet. Today she wore very tight jeans and a blouse that was half-unbuttoned.

"Not there, _here,_ " Tilda said. "I was _watching_ the carpet, too, and the footprints were just _appearing_ without anyone being here to make them! _And_ the broken toilet mysteriously _flushed itself_. While I was in the shower, no less."

"Ouch," Pip said in sympathy.

"Exactly. He _knew_ that would get my attention."

 _No,_ Harry thought. _I just stupidly forgot that it's a bad idea to flush a toilet when someone is in the shower._ He would almost think it funny that she was reading so much into this if the way she'd spoken to her "father" hadn't been so sad and forlorn.

Pip crossed her arms and scrutinised her friend. "You know what _you_ need?"

Tilda sighed and walked to the kitchen with the milk order. Harry sat at the top of the stairs, morbidly curious. Their voices carried easily to him.

He heard her place the glass milk bottle on the kitchen table with a loud _thunk_. "You're going to tell me, aren't you?" she said to Pip, clearly not wanting to hear the answer.

" _You need a man._ "

"I don't! God, that attitude makes me _sick_. I mean, if one _appeared_ I wouldn't necessarily turn him away, if he met certain criteria. But I don't see what that has to do with my dad." Harry heard her open the fridge.

Pip gave a loud sigh. "I know you don't, darling, which is why I'm here to spell it out for you. How many dates have you been on since your dad died? Hmm?"

The fridge was closed again with a loud slam. "I don't see—"

"Eight. I've counted. You've had eight dates in the last _six years_."

"I haven't met—"

"I know you don't _think_ you've met anyone suitable, including the blokes you dated—and I'm not disagreeing with you, they were dreadful—but you're not even _trying_. You know why?"

This time Tilda heaved a great sigh. "I have a feeling you're about to tell me."

"It's because you still only have room for _one_ man in your life, and the fact that he's _dead_ doesn't matter."

"That's—that's ridiculous, Pip!" she sputtered. "I didn't—my dad and I—"

"Don't get your knickers in a twist. I didn't say you and your dad had an inappropriate relationship, or wanted to. Listen to what I'm _actually_ _saying_. For you, _he_ was the man in your life. All others paled beside him. Of course it wasn't sexual. If anything, it was _worse_ —completely obsessive, platonic father-daughter love that made it impossible for you to notice other men. After all, dating other men would mean you'd grown up, and grown women don't _have_ obsessive relationships with their fathers."

"You're forgetting one little detail," Tilda said, walking into the lounge carrying a glass of orange juice and the cottage cheese. "I nearly _got married_ eight years ago." She curled into a chair while Pip followed, still agitated.

Harry was jolted; if Tilda Harrison had nearly married that was news to him. He would have been eight years old at the time. It was the first time Miss Harrison had been his teacher. That she might have a personal life had never occurred to him.

"Yes, you nearly got married, miraculously enough. And why didn't you?"

Tilda spooned cottage cheese into her mouth. Pip made a face. "What? I _like_ cottage cheese." She put another spoonful in her mouth and swallowed. "You know why we didn't go through with it. He asked me to do something _dreadful_."

Pip rolled her eyes. "Yes, to choose between him and your dad. And you did."

Tilda put her food on a table beside the chair. "Yes, I did! I couldn't _believe_ he would ask me such a thing! Who would—"

"Tilda!" Pip cried, getting her attention. "I understand, I do. And in other ways, Monty was a complete prat and you're well rid of him. But your dad's _gone_ now, and you have to get on with your life. Playing with his things isn't a substitute." Tilda clamped her mouth shut crossly. Pip's tone of voice changed to wheedling. "Oh, come on, I need someone else with me when I go clubbing so I don't look pathetic before I meet someone. Last time I was alone I was speaking on my mobile—to no one—to appear to have another person in the _world_ who'd speak to me, and I got caught out. The berk _told_ everyone in the club about it, too. 'Oi, look 'ere, this bird's talkin' on 'er mobile to nobody!' And a really _nice_ bloke was looking at me from across the bar before that, too."

Tilda crossed her arms. "Why don't you talk to them _first_?" Pip shrugged, sitting on the couch, looking unaccountably shy about this. Tilda laughed. "The last time you stayed over, you had the milkman reduced to _tears_ when you told him he'd got the order wrong again, but you can't walk up to a bloke in a club? I don't understand you."

Pip sat back, clutching a pillow. "It's different. And _you're_ the one we're discussing. You need to realise that there are other men in the world besides Jim Harrison."

Tilda made a face. "But I just—I _hate_ clubs!"

"Where _else_ do you expect to meet someone? At the bloody antiques shops?"

"Well, why not?" Tilda said defensively.

"Why? Because the only men you find in antiques shops are gay or geriatric."

"That's not true! I met this lovely man two weeks ago, David something. He and his wife Debbie run a shop in Petworth and they have an adorable little boy. Debbie is expecting again and they hope to have a girl this time."

"Well, he's no use then, is he? All right; I stand corrected. Gay, geriatric, or _married._ All bloody useless to _you_. I'm afraid, my dear, that straight, single men do _not_ spontaneously turn up in antiques shops."

"Well, no, not as a general rule," Tilda admitted grudgingly, "but when I meet one who _does_ , he'd probably be a far better candidate than someone I might meet in a club."

Pip nodded. "Oh, yes, and you'd be waiting so long for that to happen that you'd no longer discount the geriatric blokes, because _you'd_ be geriatric by then as well."

"You're stereotyping," Tilda accused her friend.

"You're avoiding," Pip countered.

"You're terribly good at analysing _me_ , Pip. It's a pity you couldn't put your powers to use analysing why you didn't stay on at university and get your degree. Then I could be paying you thirty quid an hour to tell me all about how I'm supposedly still obsessed with my dad and it's keeping me from meeting a man."

Pip shrugged, standing. "It's no mystery why I didn't stay on. I really only like psychology. Taking all of the other stuff and nonsense for the degree was a bloody bore. I couldn't be bothered. And no shrink worth his or her salt would take thirty pounds an hour; that'd be an insult."

Tilda laughed. "How should I know? I've never needed to go to one." At the look on Pip's face, she said, "I _haven't_. Listen, Pip, you don't know. You don't! You don't know what it's like to—" She took a great shuddering breath and Harry could tell, from her tone of voice, that she was crying; "—to love someone—and I don't mean in a dirty way, I mean in an utterly pure and complete way—and to have them _ripped_ away from you without a chance to rectify a great injustice. You—you just don't _know_!"

When Harry crept to the head of the stairs he saw Pip was holding Tilda while she cried on her shoulder. Harry's nose itched; he rubbed it, thinking of Sirius. _I know,_ he thought, his eyes growing moist. _I know what it's like._

Tilda Harrison cried on her friend while Pip comforted her, something Harry wouldn't have believed if he hadn't seen it. Perhaps she was a good friend to Miss Harrison after all. After a while Tilda wiped her eyes.

"I _still_ don't need a shrink, I'll have you know. After all, why should I pay for what I can get for free?" She smiled through her tears and Pip laughed.

"That's the only reason you're my friend. Free analysis. You're just using me."

"Yes, and next I'm using you to carry that Edwardian desk down the stairs."

Harry ducked into her bedroom, as that implied that they'd be coming up the stairs to retrieve something. He sat in the chair near the wardrobe again, listening to them struggle with the desk and thinking about what Tilda had said about her father.

Pip said, "Couldn't you have hallucinated a _live_ bloke in your house, instead of a dead one? Then he could help with this. I'm not a docker, you know."

Tilda laughed.

#/#/#

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	6. Visibility

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Six**

 **Visibility**

 **#/#/#**

Harry awoke with a start. He'd fallen asleep in the bedroom armchair again while watching _The Right Stuff_ on a very small television Miss Harrison kept on top of a chest of drawers. Staying in the bedroom seemed like the safest thing to do, so he might have enough warning when she entered the house and could correct any problems with the Invisibility Cloak. He would also have plenty of time to turn off the television; the volume was set far too low to be heard in the front hall. He'd run down and tried listening very hard for it.

Before settling down to watch the film, he had already taken advantage of her being out of the house to use her shower and do laundry, though he wasn't certain that his trainers were _supposed_ to go in the dryer; they'd made quite a lot of noise. The only problem he still had was the gnawing hole in his stomach. There was very little food in the kitchen, so he was worried that anything missing would be easily noticed. He had had some practice with this, however, after years with the Dursleys; he'd often found it necessary to scavenge for food after Dudley and his parents had together eaten about ninety-five percent of the available food for dinner, leaving him with almost nothing. (Dudley consumed as much as his parents combined.) Harry finally settled on two biscuits from an open packet and three very small tomatoes from a bag in the fridge with at least two dozen remaining. He also had some of the bread Miss Harrison and her friend had been picking at the previous evening, spread with what seemed to be margarine, but a little greasier. He drank water from the tap instead of reducing her already-small supply of milk and orange juice. A cup of tea would have been nice, but she had only two tea bags left, so she would have noticed one going missing. She did not seem to believe in loose tea.

The other items she had purchased the previous evening were things he didn't dare touch: an unopened box of spaghetti, a jar of pesto, a packet of uncooked rice that came with some Indian spices, and a whole chicken wrapped in butcher's paper. He also found an onion, a lemon and three potatoes. There was no hope of eating any of those things without raising the alarm. (And he didn't fancy eating an onion or a lemon anyway, let alone taking the time to cook a chicken or potatoes.) There was some old takeaway curry in the fridge, but Harry's nose wrinkled up when he opened it; Miss Harrison hadn't eaten it in time and it was too far gone for human consumption. He had to stop himself from binning it; she'd very likely remember discarding it. Fighting his natural instincts, he returned the curry to the fridge, shuddering.

He also very carefully cleaned up after himself so not a crumb remained to betray his activities. He thoroughly cleaned the shower and all other areas of the bathroom he'd used as well. Overall, he was quite pleased with himself for leaving her house so clean. Aunt Petunia could have eaten off the kitchen floor. He also checked Mrs Figg's house regularly, but there was no change there that he could see.

The Aurors remained stationed at Mrs Figg's front and back doors, and others were visible through the house's windows. Harry had initially wondered whether Muggles would notice this and find it strange, but when he observed neighbours passing Mrs Figg's home the presence of the wizards did not seem to register on them. _Anti-Muggle charms,_ he thought.

At last he'd tired of his vigil and retired to the armchair after quietly going through the various options available on the television. His eyes felt like they wanted to close but he tried to focus on the film to stay awake. The bed looked very inviting and he'd still be able to see the small television, but he put that out of his mind as he watched test pilots fly and astronauts float in space in their rockets. _God, this is boring,_ he'd thought more than once, but everything else on the telly had seemed even _more_ sleep-inducing or too noisy. He wished he could have used one of the spare rooms to just sleep quietly, but he didn't dare open any of the other doors again; there was no telling what sort of chain reaction might be set off.

He heard Miss Harrison moving around downstairs now. Shaking himself and blinking, trying to bring the world back into focus, he leapt across to the television and turned it off, putting his hand on the top and hoping that she wouldn't do the same when she came upstairs and notice that it was still warm. He decided to remain on the upper floor; unless she was going to change her clothes she'd be unlikely to enter her bedroom immediately and he could stay out of her way far more effectively than if he was traipsing around the kitchen and lounge, especially if Pip was back as well. He was still getting the hang of lurking in her house unseen.

He crept down the hall to the top of the stairs so he could hear what they were saying, in case he needed to be worried. He hoped Miss Harrison had got good prices for the things she'd sold, especially the stereoscope (whatever that was). He remembered her crying on Pip's shoulder again, talking about the injustice her father had suffered, the injustice that could never be rectified now that he was dead. The thought made his throat grow tight again and he couldn't help picturing Sirius the first time he'd met him, his long, matted hair and starved-looking face. _It wasn't fair. None of it was fair._

"Three thousand five hundred!" Pip said incredulously. "You had a desk in your house worth _three thousand five hundred pounds!_ "

Tilda Harrison _giggled_ , something Harry had never heard her do. "I know! And I wouldn't have made the sale if it weren't for the stereoscope! Here's to my dad!"

He heard the clinking of glasses and bent over to see into the lounge a little better. Tilda had opened some wine; they drank now, both smiling, and Harry felt rather pleased with himself as well. _Here's to the invisible wizard in your house,_ he thought, grinning, wondering how the stereoscope had helped her to sell the desk.

After she finished her wine in one gulp, Pip said, "Well, I must be off. I have to shower and dress. I'll be back here in forty-five minutes and then we're off to London!" Harry had forgotten about the clubbing.

Tilda sighed. "Yes, yes, I'll be ready."

"You shower, too! And put on something gorgeous. But not too gorgeous. Can't have you showing me up," she said. Tilda laughed.

"As if that would be possible," she said generously.

"Wear the black mini and that red blouse," Pip advised her as she moved toward the door.

"Black and red at this time of year?" Tilda said, wrinkling her nose. "I'll find something, never fear. See you soon."

When Pip was gone Harry was going to attempt to go downstairs, but suddenly she was ascending the stairs, so he moved off into the bedroom again. When she entered the room he had to admit that she _did_ look rather grimy from her day out. She put a small white plastic bag on the bedside table, kicked off her trainers and undressed quickly down to her underwear. Harry forgot that he shouldn't watch her do this. She threw the dirty clothes into a laundry basket in the corner and padded into the bathroom carrying her blue dressing gown.

Harry sat in the chair again, forgetting that he had planned to go downstairs. When she emerged from the bath in her dressing gown her hair was already dry, hanging straight and loose down to the middle of her back this time, making her resemble Luna Lovegood more than ever. She strode to her wardrobe, not two feet from Harry, and opened the doors, making dissatisfied noises as she surveyed her options.

Harry was starting to fall asleep again and when he jerked himself awake he hoped that he hadn't been snoring. Tilda Harrison was oblivious to this. Her bed was covered in a multitude of clothes jumbled this way and that as she moved skirts and blouses together, then apart again, making grunting noises and every so often saying, "Hmm, maybe…"

He looked down and realised that she'd thrown some clothes over _him_ without realising that they weren't sitting on the chair quite right, as they were on top of an invisible person. A silvery blue dress slid off the slick Invisibility Cloak when he shifted slightly. He mentally swore as it continued its way downward, puddling on the floor. He sat still, frozen, fearing discovery. His heart was beating very fast as she turned and walked toward him, bending over to pick up the fallen dress.

"Hmm. Maybe I was too hasty about this one."

She turned to the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door and held the dress to her body, turning to get the effect. If it weren't for the fact that it didn't make her invisible, Harry would have sworn that it was made of the same material as his Cloak; it caught the light in the same way his Cloak did when no one was wearing it and had the same watery sheen to it.

She nodded, having made her decision. Leaving the other clothes piled haphazardly on the bed (and on Harry), she began to dress at last. Harry had had every intention of shutting his eyes tightly when she got around to doing this (she'd closed the bedroom door again, making him wish he'd gone downstairs after all while she was showering). Instead he found himself unable to tear his eyes away, thinking only, _Bloody hell…_

When she was dressed and turning before the mirror, her mouth twisting as though she was uncertain still of her choice, Harry couldn't help wondering what was going to happen that night. _If she meets someone, will she go home with him or bring him here?_ Then he shook his head. _No, this is Miss Harrison. She wouldn't spend the night with some bloke she'd just met._

But to his surprise she opened the white carrier bag on her bedside table and took out a box; from this box she pulled a series of foil squares, tearing off three and stuffing them into her handbag. Harry swallowed, suddenly feeling once more like he didn't know his former teacher at all. She had applied some make-up, which made her appear to be another person altogether. Finally, after one last mirror-check, she left the room, tottering a little on the silvery sandals she'd strapped on to match her dress.

Pip had returned and he could hear them chatting on their way to the car, though he couldn't make out their words. When he heard the car pull out of the garage, he finally allowed himself to breathe again. He stood and picked up the clothes that had been on him, putting them back on the armchair. Creeping to the window, he watched the car pull away before looking at Mrs Figg's house again, his heart leaping into his throat.

 _Oh, no. I'm in worse trouble than I thought._

Standing on the pavement leading to the front door of Mrs Figg's house was none other than Severus Snape.

#/#/#

Severus Snape dropped the third eye back into his pocket when he heard a strange noise; he turned, his wand out, knowing that the wards placed on Mrs Figg's house would prevent Muggles from noticing him. The sound was coming, it seemed, from the house next door. He edged cautiously toward the pavement, his wand hidden in the folds of his cloak. Suddenly it seemed that an entire _wall_ of the house was folding up and disappearing, and he braced himself, unsure of what was happening but prepared to start hexing at a moment's notice.

After a moment, he saw that a _Muggle woman_ had opened the wall of the house. She wore a silvery blue dress with no sleeves; the hem stopped at mid-thigh when she raised her arms to push upward to enlarge the opening. Her dirty-blonde hair hung long and loose, framing her face. He found, however, that his eyes quickly returned to her legs, which ended in silvery sandals with high heels. He swallowed; seeing Muggle women dressed in leg-baring clothing always flustered him a bit, as witches rarely displayed their legs in public. It seemed terribly _forbidden._

He felt annoyed suddenly, for involuntarily reacting to the strange woman. _Focus. Stay alert,_ he ordered himself. He'd been monitoring Draco Malfoy with a third eye that Remus Lupin had provided him before being jolted by the side of the house disappearing. It was bad enough that he was already trying to watch for Potter and monitor Malfoy, but letting a woman distract him was just too much. _What is Malfoy up to?_ he wondered, putting his hand in his pocket again to find the third eye.

The Muggle woman disappeared, but a moment later he heard a car engine, followed by her car backing out of the large square opening in the side of the house. She parked it at the kerb and returned to what he now realised was a garage. She closed the large door again, grunting. He watched her return to her car, unable to take his eyes off the way her dress slid up a bit as she climbed into the driver's seat. When she was finally speeding off down the road, he shook himself again, irritated with himself for being weak. _The Dark Lord will eat you for breakfast if you show weakness of any kind,_ he reminded himself.

Suddenly, at the back of his mind, a familiar feeling was starting to make itself known; it made the hair stand up on the back of his neck and he looked around suspiciously. It felt like—like his mind was being probed. He immediately closed his eyes, erecting the mental barriers he'd long grown accustomed to using around the Dark Lord and many of his servants. Opening his eyes, he surveyed the empty street, the quiet houses with their neat square lawns. _Someone is here,_ he thought. _Someone who sees me. Someone who is not a Muggle._

He glanced back at the house; one of the Aurors, Dawlish, was a particular favourite of Fudge's and had thought he would actually help apprehend Dumbledore. Severus didn't trust him, just as he didn't trust Fudge. He half-wished Dumbledore _had_ allowed himself to become Minister for Magic years ago; they might not be in this predicament if he had. Could Dawlish be practicing Legilimency on him? No, he didn't seem alert enough for that, despite being an Auror, and whoever it had been would need to have eye contact. Dawlish was behind him, just inside the front door of the house. Who then? The sensation was unmistakable, the probing, the intrusion.

Someone was looking into his mind.

Severus Snape narrowed his eyes in suspicion and looked around the quiet suburb of Little Whinging, hoping that neither the Dark Lord nor any Death Eaters were nearby or his days as a spy would very soon be over.

His _life_ would very soon be over.

#/#/#

 _Snape!_

Harry swallowed; he reckoned that Snape would like nothing better in the world than to be the person to snap his wand in half. (Snape very much looked like he wanted to be that person at the beginning of Harry's second year, when he and Ron had flown to school in the old Ford Anglia.) To break Harry Potter's wand would be the culmination of his vendetta against James Potter, the high point of his life thus far, of this Harry was certain. _Bloody hell. I'll never get past him to reach Mrs Figg. It was bad enough trying to sneak around the castle when he was lurking in the corridors._

He put his hand under his shirt and instinctively reached for his wand, the wand Snape would so love to break in half, as he stared at the tall figure, seething with hatred. Then he was jolted and shook himself, blinking in confusion. While staring at Snape through his Invisibility Cloak, he hadn't consciously cast a spell or decided to delve into Snape's brain, but somehow he had spontaneously entered the psyche of the Potions Master, finding himself subjected to image after image of _Miss Harrison_ , and more specifically, _her legs._ Snape had been staring at _Miss Harrison's legs_ and was thinking about them so much it was practically all that was in his brain! Well, that and some images of Draco Malfoy eating his dinner. _What_? Harry thought, confused. _Why on earth is Snape imagining watching Malfoy eat? And what business does he have thinking about Miss Harrison's legs?_

A protective instinct took over and Harry deliberately pulled out of Snape's brain, once he realised what he'd done. Unlike the time he'd inadvertently practiced Legilimency on Snape and had seen some memories from his early life, this time the trip seemed solely to involve current events. (Malfoy, the great prat, still wore his prefect's badge to eat his dinner in the bleeding _summer_!) _Well,_ Harry thought, _Snape told me that eye contact is necessary for this; he just doesn't_ know _that we have eye contact._

Harry was quite shaken and his stomach moved uneasily within him. He felt that it was _sullying_ Miss Harrison for her to be looked at that way by _Snape,_ of all people. When he thought about it he decided that it was also strange that _Snape_ should look at _any_ woman like that. He normally seemed so—asexual. Monk-like, but with a streak of cruelty that was distinctly _un_ monk-like.

He tried to imagine the teenaged Severus Snape he'd seen in the Pensieve asking a girl on a date, but he could not. Imagining him _on_ a date was even more impossible. Snape was just _not_ meant to be thought of in that way, he decided. _And I'm less likely to have nightmares, too,_ he thought, _if I don't think about that._ He'd rather think about Gordon and Chloe, and that was saying something. Snape had certainly been no charmer, the way he'd called Harry's mother a Mudblood when she'd been defending him. Harry couldn't stop himself from shuddering again and made a greater effort to wipe these thoughts from his brain.

Instead, he found himself thinking about Miss Harrison's legs, as well as other body parts he'd had the opportunity to see quite well. She had, of course, been oblivious once again to anyone observing her. She'd very methodically dressed, fastening this clasp and that, adjusting her tights, fighting with the buckles on her sandals. She had seemed rather irritated about the whole thing, as though getting ready to go to a club was more trouble than it was worth.

And yet—she had put those little foil squares in her handbag…

He went to the bedside table and carefully poked at the plastic bag. He read the words on the foil squares that remained; he hadn't been mistaken about what they were. There was no doubt about it.

He settled down in the armchair to wait again, tapping his fingers impatiently on the arm, no longer interested in the way Snape had been thinking about her. Instead he wondered about the reaction she would get from the men at the club. Then a dreadful thought made his stomach clench: _What if she doesn't come home?_ After all, if she'd been expecting to come home, she wouldn't have bothered taking the condoms with her, and she probably wouldn't have left clothes all over her bed.

 _Well,_ he found himself thinking crossly, contemplating the wild things his former teacher was likely getting up to. _A fine example you're setting for one of your former pupils, Miss Harrison._

#/#/#

Harry was jerked awake by the garage door opening. He didn't remember falling asleep again. (It was becoming very, very boring to sit for hours on end in an empty house, and the only remotely interesting thing on the television had been yet another film about space, which he'd turned off half-way through.) When he checked his watch he found that it was _two in the morning._

 _Hmph,_ he thought, feeling again like an old curmudgeon. _About bloody time._ He remembered the way she'd spoken to him when she'd thought he was her dad. _Wonder what your dad would think of this if his ghost really was hanging about here?_

He crept out of the bedroom and was planning to go down the stairs to the front hall quickly, so he would be downstairs when she decided to go to bed. He did _not_ want to try to sleep in the armchair in her bedroom all night, in case he snored and gave himself away. Then he remembered the way _she_ had snored the night before and decided that another good reason not to sleep upstairs was to avoid being kept awake by _her_ noise.

 _At least she didn't go home with a strange man,_ he thought, feeling a little better about her. However, almost the second he thought this, he heard the rumbling of a distinctly male voice in the lounge. He froze half-way down the stairs, bending over to see into the doorway of the lounge and practically falling down the stairs in shock.

Clutching at the railing through his Cloak, he managed to get down the rest of the stairs very quietly, staring the entire time through the lounge doorway, where a man Harry had never seen before sat on the couch with Miss Harrison, his arm around her shoulders.

 _She brought one home!_ he thought indignantly. _Bloody hell. How could she just bring a strange man home?_

"You got anything to drink around here, Love?" the man said to Tilda Harrison. He was big and beefy, with a rather thick neck. He reminded Harry of one of the footballers at The Bartered Bull, but better-dressed and less battered.

"I opened a bottle of wine before going out, but Pip and I only had a glass each. Should be perfectly good. I'll get it."

Her voice sounded a little slurred and when she walked toward the kitchen, her hips swayed in a way that caught Harry's attention, until he noticed that this had also caught Club Creep's attention; Harry immediately decided that he didn't like the way she was walking at _all_ and that she was behaving _very improperly_.

She returned with two glasses of wine, one of which she handed to— "Tom," she said suddenly, making Harry bristle; he was certain that there couldn't have been a _worse_ name for this man to have. As far as he was concerned, if his name was _Tom_ , there was absolutely no doubt that he was evil incarnate. "I suddenly can't remember—what do you do?"

"Stocks," he said vaguely, taking a sip of wine and moving his hand to Miss Harrison's thigh, making Harry want to throw something at him.

"Yes, I remember you saying something about stocks, but what does that _mean_ really, 'stocks'? What do you _do_ with them?"

Harry was growing more horrified by the moment; it was clear to him that Miss Harrison was _drunk._ Which meant that she had been _driving_ in this condition. Unless "Tom" was the one who had driven them down from London. He didn't seem to be as far gone as she was. _I thought adults were supposed to be responsible,_ he thought.

Tom grinned. "We pin the stock certificates up on a wall and get some darts and _throw_. The stocks we hit are the ones we recommend to clients." As soon as he said this he started laughing uproariously at his own joke. He had a very loud, obnoxious laugh; "Tom" sounded rather like a braying donkey.

To his satisfaction, Miss Harrison did _not_ laugh at Tom's little "joke" about how he and his colleagues selected recommended stocks. (Harry was quite certain that their _clients_ wouldn't think it was a joke.) Unfortunately, the reason for her lack of laughter appeared to be that she was too inebriated to make out what he'd said. She simply squinted at him and said thickly, "I don't get it."

In her current state of dottiness and with her hair down around her face, she was bearing a very striking resemblance to Luna Lovegood, and Harry almost felt like he was witnessing a great hulking stockbroker (who had to have been a footballer at some time in the past, Harry was quite certain) making a pass at a fifteen-year-old girl. _What's he playing at?_ Harry thought crossly, as though "Tom" was also supposed to be seeing Miss Harrison as a teenager.

It was obvious that he was _not_ seeing her this way.

His hand was moving on her thigh and he leaned close to her face. Harry felt his heart going faster as he crept into the room, casting about for something he could do to make them _behave_ other than revealing himself.

He bumped into some shelves near the door, making the glass ornaments on them rattle a bit. He jumped at the sound, but when he looked quickly at the pair of them on the couch, they were completely oblivious; Tom appeared to be trying to lick her _molars_ , while his hand snaked under her dress, revealing quite a lot of her legs in the process. Harry reached for something at random on the shelves, throwing caution to the wind, and also throwing the object in his hand at Tom's monstrous head.

"Oi!" Tom cried in pain, separating his mouth from Miss Harrison's very abruptly. Rubbing the back of his head, he bent to pick up the object, which had fallen to the floor. He looked around suspiciously. "Who did that? What's going on?"

He held tightly to the framed photograph Harry had thrown; the glass had broken and it was difficult to see who was depicted in the photograph. Having become accustomed to wizarding photos, it looked strange to Harry for a person to stay so still in a photo. Tilda Harrison snatched the frame from Tom, staring at the picture, suddenly jolted into sobriety. She stood, still holding the photograph, staring at it as though terrified.

"Do you mind explaining what's going on here?" Tom demanded. Harry glowered at him from under his Cloak, looking about for something else he could throw. Tilda put the photograph face down on the shelf where it had been.

"Erm, nothing, nothing at all." She looked around the room nervously and Tom squinted at her.

"Are you all right?"

She swallowed and nodded, her pale eyes wide as she stood in the lounge doorway, her eyes sweeping the room nervously. "Perhaps—perhaps we should take this upstairs."

Tom looked entirely _too_ enthusiastic about _that_ , as far as Harry was concerned. He hopped up from the couch, forgetting about his wine and straightening his tie as though this would make him look more dashing. As the pair of them began ascending the stairs Harry grabbed the photograph in desperation and lobbed it again at the back of Tom's head. He hit him squarely, producing another outraged roar from the large man; when the frame fell to the floor of the hall the glass shattered further, scattering small shards.

"Bloody hell!" Tom cried; when he touched the back of his head this time, his hand came away with a bit of red on it.

"What kind of house is this?" he demanded of her, as though she could have thrown the frame at him while walking _ahead_ of him up the stairs. He stomped to the bottom of the stairs and Tilda turned, white-faced when she saw the frame lying face up on the floor with its glass missing.

"It's—well—I can explain—"

"I bloody doubt it!" he said crossly, striding to the front door and pulling it open. "And even if you could, I wouldn't be here to listen!"

He stormed out in high dudgeon; she started to follow. "But—how are you going to get home?"

"I've got my mobile; I'll call for a bloody taxi!" he growled; through the open door, Harry could see him striding angrily away.

"But—but I don't think you'll—" she started to say, trailing off; "—get one at this hour," she finished softly, leaning wearily against the door. "At least in Little Whinging," she added even more quietly. After staring out into the night for a minute she suddenly slammed the door quite hard, muttering, " _Bollocks_ ," under her breath. She stooped to pick up the frame, which Harry hadn't dared to touch again.

To his surprise, she started to talk to the frame. "Now, listen, Dad, I don't know what you're playing at, but let's get one thing straight here: I am an adult. That means a lot of things. I work to support myself, I don't need anyone to take care of me and I can bloody well bring home a nice bloke if I like and go to bed with him!"

Her voice ended on a growl as she put the frame back on its shelf yet again; Harry saw now that it was a photo of a middle-aged man with dark blond hair and eyes that looked just like Matilda Harrison's. _Her dad's photograph. Of all the things I had to choose, it was her dad's photograph. Brilliant._

She paced angrily, drinking her wine and addressing the photograph. "You know, I'm starting to think Pip was right! I _do_ need a man; not to support me or tell me what to do. Tonight I just needed a man in _bed with me_ ," she cried, pointing upward, "especially as there hasn't been one there in _over a year_. That's right! I'm saying it. _To you_. I'm an adult and I wanted to bring someone home for shagging and I don't care what _you_ think about any of it." She sipped her wine and continued to pace restlessly. There was a wild light in her eye as she addressed the photograph again.

"You never did accept my growing up, you _know_ that," she added her voice growing louder. She took a rather large gulp of wine this time. "You were _always_ interfering with my boyfriends. Suited you, didn't it, to have me around to clean the house and do the cooking. And what a hypocrite! It's not as though _you_ lived like a monk, did you? After Mum left and Audrey took her side, Jack and I _knew_ you were carrying on with Mrs. Parker. How _convenient_ , wasn't it, that an attractive divorcee moved in next door, yeah? How bloody-sodding _convenient_ for _you_!"

Her voice rose on a shriek and she punctuated her rant by throwing her wine glass at the mantle, where it shattered and made droplets of wine fly. She stared at the mantle, blinking.

"Oh, bloody hell. I wasn't done drinking that," she said in a softly slurred voice. Harry grimaced; he didn't think she _needed_ more wine. After the way she'd spoken to her father earlier he was rather surprised about the outburst. But then he remembered his own father and thought, _These relationships are never simple, no matter who you are._

And then there had been Sirius, whose hypocrisy had irked him more than once during the previous year. He swallowed, jolted at first before thinking, _Yes. He could be the biggest bloody hypocrite. And then he'd try to goad me into doing something by telling me that my dad would have done it just because it was a challenge and he'd want to be able to say he'd done it._

It was strangely exhilarating to have thoughts of _anger_ concerning Sirius. Freeing. He wondered whether Miss Harrison felt the same way. He didn't have to wonder for long.

She stood blinking, gazing at her father's photograph for a minute after throwing the wine glass. Then she shook herself, as though she'd woken up. Lifting her chin, she informed the photograph, "And now I'm going up to bed. _Alone._ But the next time I don't _want_ to do that alone I'll thank you to mind your own _bleeding business_!"

She strode angrily to the stairs and, after three attempts to put her foot on the bottom step, she finally managed to start ascending. Halfway up she turned and spoke toward the lounge. "I'll get a sodding exorcist in here if I have to! Mark my words!" Harry watched her until she was out of sight; he sat on the couch, letting out a relieved sigh.

He wasn't terribly sorry that he'd managed to drive off Tom the Club Creep, but he was rather sorry that he'd caused her so much trouble, starting that morning with the broken toilet. Her day would have been much calmer if it weren't for him. He went to the kitchen so he could peer at Mrs Figg's house again, but the moment he did, he saw Snape and ducked down instinctively before realizing that this was unnecessary. He returned to the lounge.

Sinking onto the couch, he decided that the next day, if Snape was still over there, he should just face the music and turn himself in. Perhaps Snape _wasn't_ there to break his wand. He might have been there at Dumbledore's request, to spirit him away from the Ministry Aurors. Harry sighed. Sooner or later he would probably have to learn to trust Snape.

 _But not tonight._ He was exhausted and feeling awful enough about what he'd put Miss Harrison through; he didn't feel like having Snape rail at him for his stupidity tonight. That could wait for the morning. Harry was _definitely_ in no hurry to experience _that_.

He curled in a ball once more, covering himself thoroughly and, after a time of his thoughts chasing each other frantically around his brain, he dropped off into a less peaceful sleep than he'd enjoyed the night before, but sleep nonetheless.

#/#/#

His long, thin, pale fingers caressed the back of the chair. "Do we know where Potter is yet?"

"No, but Dumbledore is sure to know, and Snape is his man, so we're shadowing him."

"And you are certain that he knows nothing?"

Peter Pettigrew nodded, never taking his eyes from his master. "I am certain, Master. He believes that you believe that he is a loyal Death Eater and that you already exacted punishment for his 'pretending' to be Dumbledore's spy."

"Good," the cold high voice intoned ominously. "I do hate to tip my hand prematurely."

"Never fear, Master. I have observed him while in my rat form; he cannot probe my mind when I am a rat. He does not perceive my mind as something high and logical enough to be human."

His master nodded, the glowing red eyes surveying the trembling, round little man.

"Good," he said again, laughing. "Good. We can have some fun with him, first. Make sure he sees and hears some things that will serve to get rid of as many of Dumbledore's people as possible."

He did not finish speaking but simply laughed and laughed in that cold, cruel way he had. Peter Pettigrew smiled feebly at his master and attempted to laugh along.

#/#/#

" _ARRGGGGH!_

Harry woke with a start, holding his scar; _Voldemort was happy. Why was he happy?_ He wracked his brain, trying to remember.

When he heard footsteps on the stairs, he turned to see Tilda Harrison running down them wearing an oversized man's shirt. She stopped in shock and stared into the lounge. Harry wondered why. Then he realised that she was looking right at him and a second later he looked down, seeing his Invisibility Cloak in a heap at his feet.

 _No no no no no no no._

She stood over him and swallowed, whispering uncertainly, " _Harry?_ "

He swallowed and smiled feebly at her.

"Good morning, Miss Harrison," he said softly.

#/#/#

 **Please be a responsible reader and review.**

#/#/#

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	7. The Right Stuff

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Seven**

 **The Right Stuff**

 **#/#/#**

Harry stalled, his brain working furiously to come up with—absolutely nothing. "Erm—" He had no clue what to say to Miss Harrison.

She glared at him, incredulous, evidently forgetting that she was not wearing a dressing gown over the man's shirt she slept in, which only reached to mid-thigh. Harry looked at her legs, remembering what he had seen in Snape's mind when he'd inadvertently stumbled into his brain, then swiftly raised his eyes to hers again.

"I—I can explain. But—but wouldn't you like to put on a dressing gown first?" he said despite the lump in his throat, which was making it very hard to speak. His last words had come out rather squeaky-sounding. _Think think think, Potter,_ he demanded of his brain, as though it wasn't part of him. _Come up with SOMETHING._

She eyed him suspiciously, her arms crossed on her chest. "You want me to leave the room again, do you? I don't think so." Glancing down, she noticed the Invisibility Cloak. "What's this?" She picked it up, gasping at the way it felt in her hands. She let it flow between her fingers and then from one hand to the other. Harry started to feel almost hypnotised by her movements, remembering how fascinated he'd been when he'd first received it.

But before he could open his mouth to speak, she looked him in the eye and said shrewdly, "You're not like the rest of us, are you Harry?" He swallowed but the lump just wouldn't go away. Miss Harrison wasn't stupid. She could put two and two together.

Harry took a deep breath and finally answered. "No. I'm not like—like most other people," he stammered, his heart sinking into his stomach. He didn't have any choice, did he? She had worked it out for herself. How could the Ministry blame _him_ if a Muggle had simply used her head? He didn't get the impression that she was likely to run to the newspapers about it. He trusted Miss Harrison. She'd always been quite sensible and—

"I knew it!" she crowed, pointing at him. "I knew you weren't from this planet!"

He groaned. "Yes, yes, you've worked out that I'm a—a _what_?" he said, belatedly realising what she'd said.

 _Yes, she can put two and two together,_ he thought. _But she evidently thinks that the answer is twenty-two._

#/#/#

Albus Dumbledore tapped the tips of his fingers together and looked thoughtfully at Fred and George Weasley.

"I understand that as part of your product line you have a little something called Skiving Snackboxes."

Fred and George looked uncomfortably at each other, shifting in their chairs.

"Er, you see, Professor," Fred began, swallowing.

"The word 'skiving' is just meant in a sort of _joking_ way," George continued.

"We're not trying to _encourage_ anyone to skive off lessons."

"Oh, no!" George agreed with wide-eyed innocence. "We'd _never_ do that."

Dumbledore chuckled, his blue eyes twinkling. "Now, now, the pair of you are no longer Hogwarts students. I am not enquiring after your snackboxes because I wish to punish you. I _have_ heard, however, of a particular item that induces nosebleeds in anyone who ingests it."

"Oh, that would be our Nosebleed Nougats," Fred said proudly, straightening up. "Took us a while—"

"—and quite a lot of our own blood spilled—" George chimed in.

"—plus a few other people's—"

"—to perfect the antidote—"

"—but they work brilliantly now," Fred finished. "The antidote actually makes the bleeding _stop_."

"Instead of making it worse," George assured the headmaster, nodding.

Dumbledore also nodded. "Yes, yes, that sounds like quite a good bit of magic there. How much would it cost, do you think, to order a number of _special_ Nosebleed Nougats— _without_ the antidote?"

Fred and George looked at each other uncertainly. "You don't _want_ the antidote?"

Dumbledore looked calmly at the twins. "That's right. Just the nosebleed part," he said pleasantly. "And I also understand that you have some very interesting hats that make it appear that a person's head has, well, _dis_ appeared."

The twins lost their self-consciousness and began talking—finishing each other's sentences again—about the hats, the nougats, about Extendable Ears and other items. Dumbledore continued to nod and smile, taking notes on a piece of parchment.

When they had described everything they sold, Dumbledore drew a line under a column of figures, waved his hand over the column and surveyed the result. "Now then, by my calculations, and according to the prices you quoted, the cost of this order would be two-hundred forty-nine Galleons, ten Sickles and five Knuts." He smiled at them. "However—let us just say two-hundred fifty Galleons for simplicity's sake, shall we?"

Fred and George looked at each other, eyes like saucers.

George finally choked out, "We shall," when Fred put his elbow in his ribs.

"You—you mean—you want _all_ of our Skiving Snackboxes?" Fred said, making sure he hadn't misunderstood.

"And the Headless Hats?" George added.

"And you want us to make twenty more Extendable Ears? Is that individual ears or pairs?"

"Pairs. And yes, I do," Dumbledore told them. "Plus the other items we discussed, the Fainting Fancies, and so on." He smiled at them both, enjoying their shocked expressions. "I'd like the lot."

#/#/#

"I just _knew_ you were an alien!" Miss Harrison continued to move the Cloak through her fingers, as though she'd forgotten she was doing it. Harry gawped at her, unable to speak for a moment; he was surprised that a supposedly sensible adult would suggest that he was an _alien_. He was starting to wonder whether she was in the habit of reading one of the Muggle equivalents of _The Quibbler._ It wasn't as though there was a shortage of rags to choose from.

"I'm—I'm a _what_? No—" he started to say. A moment later he mentally cursed himself for this. _Bugger_. An alien! _That would have been a perfect cover story._ But now he'd said 'no'.

"You're not? But—but what about _this_?" She brandished the Cloak at him. "And—and those strange things you did when you were younger. And why are you in my bloody _house_?" she finally asked, starting to grow rather pink. "Where've you been since—since _your_ house—"

Harry took heart from the fact that she still seemed reluctant to accuse him of having blown up his own house. He looked sheepishly at her and stammered, "I've—I've been here, in _your_ house." It was the truth. "Mrs Figg, next door, used to babysit me when I was younger."

"Yes, I know, I know," she said impatiently, having gone back to compulsively caressing the Cloak.

"—and I had thought to go to her for help after I saw the news report that my house had been attacked." It was easier to tell the truth than to come up with a wild story, but he still wasn't certain what to say when he came to the end of the things that sounded _normal,_ which was to say, non-alien and non-magical.

"News report! Aha! I _told_ Pip you hadn't blown up your own house," she started to say triumphantly, pointing at him with the Cloak.

"—but there were already these—these _people_ there who I really didn't want to see, so I ducked into your garage—"

He trailed off, still uncertain about how he was going to explain being a wizard. She seemed to have become addicted to touching the Invisibility Cloak and before he could stop her she had swung it over her shoulders, as though she wanted to admire the way it looked. Her eyes grew wide as she looked down and realized that she was looking _through_ her body clear down to the carpet. She screamed for a moment, then stopped short, continuing to stare down at where she _should_ have been.

"What—what _is_ this thing, Harry? And if you're not an alien—what _are_ you? And where did you _get_ this, from NASA or something?"

He stared at her, thinking of the films he'd been watching. _That's it_! It was perfect. Absolutely bloody perfect. He tried not to look elated and instead contorted his face into a mask of disappointment.

"Oh, _damn_ , you guessed it!" he groaned, watching her expression carefully. She stared when he said this.

"I—I _what_?"

Harry sighed and nodded at where her body should have been. "That's an Invisibility Cloak. Very top secret, you know. Most of the others don't have them, but I inherited that from my dad. That's how I've been hiding in your house. I've been keeping watch on Mrs Figg's house, waiting for the coast to be clear."

"Hiding? In my house? In _this_?" The truth suddenly dawned on her and she ripped it off and threw it at him. "You were pretending to be my dad's ghost, weren't you? Bloody hell! How—how _dare_ you?" she demanded, growing quite red in the face. He winced.

"I'm really sorry about that, I am. But I very stupidly flushed the toilet yesterday morning, and then you got all excited when you saw the marks my wet trainers were making on the carpet. I didn't know what else to do," he finished feebly.

She sat in a chair, putting her head in her hands. "God, I feel so _stupid_ ," she said through her fingers. "Dad's ghost. _Dad's ghost!_ Oh my god."

Harry didn't comment on her belief in ghosts actually being a little _less_ stupid than her deciding that he was an alien. _Is that why she defended me to Soberley?_ he thought. How very strange. He had come to the conclusion, once and for all, that it was absolutely impossible to predict what adults were thinking, even Snape, who evidently was rather fond of Miss Harrison's _legs_.

He shook himself, trying to get Snape out of his brain again, remembering bits and pieces of the two years that Matilda Harrison had been his teacher. He would never have imagined that she thought she was teaching a boy from another planet. _Even witches and wizards aren't that barmy_ , he thought; _well, apart from Luna Lovegood._

What he didn't know was whether she was barmy enough to believe the tale he was spinning in his mind, a tale that just might make it possible for her to feel she could trust him _and_ make it unnecessary for him to break the secrecy statute and risk being called up before the Wizengamot again. Since Dumbledore had been restored as the chief wizard on the court, Harry very much doubted he would be able to speak on his behalf during yet _another_ hearing.

Miss Harrison was scrutinising him carefully, having picked up the Invisibility Cloak again, running it through her fingers once more. She eyed him suspiciously. "What did you mean _Most of the others don't have them_? Most of the other _what_?"

#/#/#

Fred looked like he might be short of breath. "Yes, sir, Professor. When do you want it all?"

"Oh, as soon as possible, as soon as possible. You needn't bring it all way up here, however, simply deliver it all to Headquarters."

"Headquarters?" George frowned. "We live there."

"Yes, I know," Dumbledore said, smiling. "I believe your products could be very useful to the Order."

Fred perked up at that. "The Order! So—are we the official suppliers to the Order of the Phoenix, then?"

"Yes, you could say that. Except that you can't," he added, suddenly quite stern. "So don't get any ideas about putting that in an advert in the _Daily Prophet_."

Fred looked rather disappointed, as though that was _exactly_ what he'd been hoping to do. "Oh, well," he sighed.

"But you _could_ consider yourselves to be junior members of the Order," Dumbledore said, smiling again. "Which means that you wouldn't attend _all_ meetings, but you might be summoned to give advice concerning which of your products would be most helpful in—certain situations."

"We're there!" George said immediately, grinning.

Dumbledore chuckled again. "I know that the pair of you have been dying to attend an Order meeting for the last year. Well, you shall soon have your chance. Your mother will contact you when your presence is required." He smiled. "I assume that means that she'll shout up the stairs. In the meantime," he said, opening a drawer in his desk and taking out a small heavy-looking chest, "I believe that this should cover fifty percent of my order, the remainder to be paid upon delivery."

He opened the small metal casket; the gold coins within shone brightly in the morning sun streaming through the windows. Fred and George swallowed; they'd seen a thousand Galleons when Harry had given them his Triwizard winnings, but they'd put it in Gringotts for safekeeping and had been drawing it out, bit by bit, to start the shop and obtain premises, until there was almost nothing left. They'd been doing well for a new business, but they didn't have a lot of gold to spare for heaping in piles and admiring. This was the single biggest order they'd received.

"There is, however, a caveat," Dumbledore said, making them frown. "A catch," he explained. "I wish to know about _all_ of your customers. Each and every person who comes into your shop, even if it is just to browse. I strongly suspect that I will not prove to be the only one who can find other uses for these items besides practical jokes and skiving off lessons."

He closed the chest, fastened the clasp and gave it to Fred, who handled it as carefully as if it were bone china.

"And now I am afraid you shall have to excuse me. I have a number of meetings this morning. I do appreciate your coming to tell me about your product line." He lowered his voice. "I know that your mother didn't approve," he said quietly, as though Molly Weasley might be able to hear them, "but I don't think continuing on at school is for everyone. You had over six years of a magical education, you're of-age and you have a way to support yourselves. Many who complete seven years here cannot immediately make a living, nor do they have any idea what they want to do with their lives. I hope your parents are proud of you. I know I am. How many O.W.L.s you get is not really the measure of a wizard, now is it?" he added, his eyes twinkling again.

They grinned at him. "No, professor," Fred agreed. "And we'll try to get all of this made as soon as possible," he promised.

"Yeah. We, erm, don't actually _have_ a lot of what you're asking for," George admitted nervously, looking over the list.

"If you should need to buy more materials, that advance should help, but do let me know if you need more."

Fred nodded vigorously. "Oh, we will, Professor, we will."

Dumbledore stood. "Very good. Do have a good day. And thank you again."

As they left, George called over his shoulder, "No, Professor, thank _you_!" before following his brother down the stairs. Both of them were practically dancing with glee.

Dumbledore sighed and sat, nodding at Fawkes. The red and gold bird rose into the air and disappeared suddenly. When Fawkes reappeared he was alone, but carrying a note.

 _I'd feel more comfortable using Floo. I know it's being watched, but I'm in disguise, so I don't think it's a security risk._

Dumbledore waved his hand at the cold fireplace, making flames spring into life there. A moment later they turned deep green and soon after that, the figure of Remus Lupin was emerging from the fire. However, a moment later, his appearance changed drastically as the potion wore off. He continued brushing down his robes and shaking soot from his long red ponytail as though nothing had happened.

"Good morning, Mr. Weasley. How are you today?"

#/#/#

Harry clamped his mouth shut, as though he didn't want to tell her the "truth." After a minute, though, he sighed and threw up his hands. "I'm going to have to tell you, aren't I?" he sighed in resignation.

"Please," Miss Harrison said, crossing her arms, giving him the gimlet eye he remembered from when she was his teacher.

"Well—let's start with my school," Harry said. "I _don't_ go to St Brutus's."

"Well, I never _thought_ that sounded right," Miss Harrison said, shaking her head. "And it would explain why the headmaster there had never heard of you. So where _do_ you go to school?"

"It's—it's not in this country." That was true, in a way, since Hogwarts was in Scotland. He was _not_ , however, going to _tell_ her that he went to school in Scotland. "It's in Greenland," he finally said, swallowing, looking around furtively, as though the room might be bugged. "And it's not a normal school," he added.

"What kind of school _is_ it?" she whispered, looking less suspicious by the moment. _She already believes me,_ he thought, trying not to look too cheerful. _She wants to believe._

"Well, first off, I couldn't believe you guessed where the Cloak came from," he said, nodding at it.

"I thought you were going to tell me about your school first thing. NASA? Why on earth would your dad have something from NASA?" She dropped her jaw. "Was he—he wasn't an _astronaut_ , surely?" she said frowning, looking a little doubtful now. "I mean—it would have been in the news years ago."

"Oh, no, not an astronaut, no," he said choosing his words carefully. "See, NASA doesn't just make things for—for astronauts. A lot of things created at NASA are used by the Americans for their agents, and for agents from other friendly countries."

"Agents!" she exclaimed. "So your dad was—"

"And my mum, too. Yeah." He swallowed. "They were spies. That's why they were killed."

He let Miss Harrison absorb this bit of information. He'd really only twisted the truth a little bit, in his view. Watching her face carefully, he looked for any signs of her having decided that he was the world's biggest liar. He certainly _felt_ like he was.

"So," she prompted him, "this school you go to in Greenland—"

He thought as quickly as he could. "Well, erm, kids around the world in some countries get—get tested when they're rather young, and if they show certain talents, they get to go to this school for—well, for future spies. And some of us just end up going automatically, like me, because my mum and dad were both spies, so it's assumed that I might have inherited some of what made them good at their jobs."

She raised an eyebrow. "I hope you turn out to be better than they were at their jobs, since they got killed." The moment she said this she looked horrified. "Oh, Harry! I'm sorry. I—I didn't mean to imply that it was their fault—"

He grimaced. "It's all right. They were killed because they were betrayed. Someone they trusted completely turned on them and led their worst enemy—the enemy of most of the civilised world, for that matter, even though most people don't know it—right to them. But—but while she was dying, my mum did something to protect me, and when _he_ tried to kill me too, even though I was just a baby, somehow it all backfired on him and he was hurt very badly and had to go into hiding for a long time, to try to get his strength back."

The words rushed out of him now, because he could talk about this without mentioning magic at all. He sighed. "Well, he's got his strength back now and he's more than a bit cross about losing all those years because of me. I'm quite certain it was his people who blew up my house while I was out; they were coming after _me_. And now the Mug—er, the police think I did it, even though I was two towns away, and my own people may also think I'm to blame, since they all know how much I hate my relatives, which means I may be facing an inquiry. I could even be kicked out of school, if I can't prove I didn't do it." He swallowed the lump in his throat for what seemed the millionth time. He'd _wanted_ to leave Hogwarts last year, when _Umbridge_ was there. Now the idea of leaving it was horrifying.

"Oh, Harry!" she cried, horror-struck. "How dreadful! Is that who you're avoiding next door? Some of 'your' people?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Mrs Figg's place is sort of a safe house. She's a retired agent herself. One of the best in her day," he added, warming to the yarn he was spinning.

She stood and paced, still grasping the Cloak. " _Mrs Figg_?" She stared at him, incredulous; he shrugged and nodded. She shook her head, resuming her pacing. "I just can't—I can't believe our government would be so irresponsible as to let _children_ work as _spies_."

Harry bristled instinctively, remembering every time during the previous year when he was reminded that he was too young to be in the Order proper. "I'm not a child," he said, unable to keep the resentment out of his voice.

#/#/#

"Harry's a kid. How can we just _leave_ him there?"

"He is perfectly safe, Mr. Weasley. I have managed to pinpoint his exact location and I must say, he is showing very good instincts, considering that he is not a trained Auror. I have also placed some additional protections on the house. I do not want to push him just now, not after—after what he just went through with Sirius. I suspect that his bout of escapism has to do more than a little with how he feels about my having kept Sirius confined to Headquarters last year. I don't want to give him a reason to react impulsively again. He thinks he has a certain amount of autonomy at the moment, and that is fine.

"Now then, your job is going to be convincing people at the Ministry to remove the Aurors from Little Whinging. It is my belief that they are what is preventing Harry from coming forward. In the meantime, he is perfectly safe. Trust me."

"Even with all of those escaped Death Eaters on the loose?"

Dumbledore held up his hand. "I have people working on that, never fear. The situation is not as dire as one might suppose. You have your job cut out for you. Oh, and an excellent piece in the _Prophet_. Congratulations. Those Head Boy tendencies continue to shine through," Dumbledore added, smiling.

#/#/#

Harry bristled. "I'll be sixteen on the thirty-first. And technically, I'm not an agent yet. After I finish the next two years of school, there are three more years of intensive training to get through," he said, wondering whether he'd get to even finish his last two years of school, let alone train to be an Auror. "I can't help that this madman has targeted me. He blames me for what happened to him. What am I _supposed_ to do?"

She looked contrite and sat on the couch. "Oh, god, I'm sorry, Harry. Of course it isn't your fault that someone killed your parents and is trying to kill you now. I just can't—I can't believe _you're_ in training to be a _spy._ And I'm still not certain how that explains some of the really weird things you did when you were small."

Harry had forgotten about that; the alien-lie would probably have applied to those incidents much better than the spy-in-training-lie. He wasn't sure, for instance, how he would explain having turned Mr. Axminster's toupee bright blue. (He suppressed a smile at the memory.) However, she might not remember that, since it was the year before he had her for a teacher the first time. He thought furiously, trying to come up with an escapade of his that didn't require a magical explanation.

"Well, erm, see, my mum and dad left me some prototypes, things that were still experimental, like the trainers I was wearing on the day I ended up on the roof of the school kitchens. I'd been having fun the previous day, wearing them to get away from Dudley when he was bothering me, and I must have forgotten to put my regular trainers on for school that morning."

She laughed. "I see. You don't know how _livid_ Old Soberley was about that one," she said, leaning forward a little to speak to him in confidence. He blinked, distracted for a moment, and then forced his eyes up to her face again.

"Was she?" he asked, hoping she hadn't seen where he'd been looking. _Can't she put some sodding clothes on?_ he thought. He was finding it more and more difficult not to ogle her, especially since he now knew what she was hiding beneath the oversized man's shirt. And her long legs were _not_ covered by the shirt.

"Oh, yes!" she said gleefully, clapping her hands. "She wanted to expel you, but your aunt and uncle said they'd sue if she did."

He frowned. "They were probably worried that they'd actually have to _pay_ for me to go to school somewhere. I don't think they'd object to my being expelled on _principle._ "

"I'm sure you're right. Why is it they treated you so badly, anyway?"

He sighed, remembering Uncle Vernon trying to kick him out the previous summer. "Well, they knew how my mum and dad died, didn't they? And that their murderer would probably come after me as soon as he could."

She nodded in understanding now. "They didn't think it was safe to have you around. I understand. I'm not saying I agree," she said quickly, seeing his face; "I just said I understand."

They sat in silence for a few minutes; Miss Harrison continued to play with the Cloak. She looked like she was thinking very hard. Harry hoped she wasn't thinking about any holes in his story. He didn't have anything else to work with other than the truth, and he couldn't tell her _that_.

"Anyway," he finally continued, "like they said on the news, my godfather was Sirius Black. He was being held because it was thought that he was the one who betrayed my parents. But it _wasn't_ him. It was actually—" He couldn't very well tell her about Peter Pettigrew being an Animagus and hesitated for a moment. "It was actually one of the staff at our school. He'd been working there for years, in disguise, because after _he_ betrayed my parents, he framed my godfather for the betrayal, faked his own death, and then framed my godfather for _that_. No one went after _him_ since they thought he was _already_ dead. And my godfather really did feel very guilty about my mum and dad dying, because he was the one who encouraged them to trust the rat who betrayed them. So when they came to take him away he was just laughing hysterically and didn't try to defend himself. He cracked up a bit. More than a bit."

"Oh, that's _dreadful_. So your poor godfather went mad and was sent to prison? For something he didn't do?" Harry tried not to wince at the expression on her face; he knew he was manipulating her emotions, but he needed her firmly on his side.

Harry nodded. "That's right. Well, it's a special prison, actually. For agents. Top secret. When he accidentally found out from someone visiting the prison something that made him think the traitor was at our school he managed to escape. He wasn't really told about it; the visitor didn't know it himself, like everyone else, he thought the rat was dead. Sirius worked it out. He was worried that the traitor was going to try to hurt me.

"At first Scotland Yard told everyone about my godfather's escape because the government still thought he was guilty—you never did hear what prison he escaped from, did you? And they told everyone he was really dangerous because—well, he never forgot all of the things _he_ learned to be an agent, after all. That's why he was in _that_ prison, which has _very_ particular security measures. _And_ since he was the first person to ever escape from that prison, they reckoned he was _extra_ dangerous.

"After a while Scotland Yard were probably told that others were taking over the investigation, so I reckon they stopped looking for him. That's probably why they said 'no comment.' They don't actually _know_ anything. It's all very top-secret." Harry felt like the words were tumbling out of him; even though it wasn't the _full_ truth, it felt good to tell someone the gist of what had happened.

"So _did_ he keep the traitor from hurting you?" she said breathlessly, clearly caught up in the story.

Harry drew his lips into a line. "Well, yes and no. It turned out that wasn't the traitor's goal. He left the school and returned to his mas—er, boss. The man who killed my parents. He helped him to regain the rest of his strength. And then he made me think he was holding my godfather, and when I went off to try to rescue him—it turned out to be a lie. Which meant my godfather ended up trying to rescue _me_ , and—" He choked, the emotions real, even though the story he was telling had nothing to do with magic.

"Harry?" she whispered, moving closer to him. She put her hand on his arm and he instinctively froze.

"He was killed," he said bluntly, hating the words. His heart felt like it was made of ice; it was like killing Sirius all over again to say those three words. "Because of me," he added, trying not to cry. "It was my fault. I let myself be fooled…"

She looked helplessly at him; he had to keep talking or he would utterly fall apart. "When my uncle's sister came to visit, the conversation ended up coming round to why my godfather hadn't taken me after my parents had died, and I decided I'd had enough of the way she always put me down, and my parents, too. To shut her up, I told her that he couldn't have taken care of me as he was in _prison_ at the time for _mass murder_. I, erm, sort of left out the part about his being innocent. And—and dead."

Miss Harrison smirked. "That was very bad, Harry," she said, looking like she was on the verge of laughing. Harry felt a little more cheerful now, too.

"I know it was bad," Harry admitted to her, trying not to grin too broadly. "But I couldn't resist. My aunt and uncle—and my cousin, too—know about my parents, and about where I'm really going to school, but his sister doesn't know the truth. She's the reason they first started telling people that I go to St Brutus's. I got fed up and decided that I _had_ to get out of the house, away from her. That's why I put on my Invisibility Cloak and took the bus to New Stokington. And you know the rest," he finished, breathing a sigh of relief and hoping she didn't look for, let alone find, any inconsistencies in his story.

"So," she said slowly, "your godfather. Was he—was he ever officially cleared before he died?"

#/#/#

While he waited for his next appointment to arrive, Dumbledore reached for the small instrument he kept handy for monitoring Harry. What he saw made him frown; Harry was sitting on a couch talking to a woman wearing a large shirt and not, evidently, much else.

 _He's been discovered._

Harry wasn't in danger, he knew, or the instrument would have been making loud whistling sounds while he was in his previous meeting. But this still wasn't good. Sighing deeply and hoping that Harry was _not_ telling her that he was a wizard, Dumbledore stepped to his window, letting in a cool morning breeze when he opened it. He flicked his wand at the sky, releasing from the tip what appeared to be a very fast, very small, misty silver bird, which soon became lost in the ragged white clouds scudding overhead.

He closed the window again and sat, tapping his fingers together thoughtfully. When a knock came at his study door, he said, "Come," rather absentmindedly. He did manage to look up and smile, however, when a tall dark wizard with a broody look about the eyes came striding into the room. If Harry had been there, he would have immediately recognised the figure of Rodolphus Lestrange.

"She knows," Dumbledore said immediately, before his visitor could even sit.

#/#/#

 _Was Sirius cleared before he died_?

Harry swallowed and shook his head. "No. Not as such," he said quietly. "After serving over twelve years for something he didn't do." His eyes were stinging again.

"That's—that's like my dad!" she whispered. Looking sheepish, she said, "I do hope you don't think I'm daft for that alien thing. You see, my dad insisted that _he_ was once abducted by aliens." Harry's jaw dropped; he shut it abruptly with a snap as she continued. "He was driving in the country one day when a really bright green light came out of nowhere. That's all he remembered." Harry's eyes widened; it sounded like her dad had come into contact with magic! "He came to _hours_ later," she continued, "sitting in his car by the side of the road. Doesn't remember how he got there."

Harry was more convinced than ever that magic was involved in the incident, both a crime that probably involved the Killing Curse and possibly also a memory charm placed on Mr Harrison, perhaps by someone from the Ministry of Magic.

She'd still been whispering, but now she cleared her throat and spoke normally again. "It wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't _told_ anyone about it. But he was really excited and called a friend who had a friend in Fleet Street and the next thing we knew it was in all the papers. Then, when he was framed for breaking into a large manor house where he'd done some carpentry and other things, he ended up going to prison for a time, partly because no one believed a word he said. Even the _judge_ asked my dad, 'Oh, you couldn't have done it? What's your alibi? Abducted by Martians again, were we?' I read it in the papers, later. My mum saved them.

"I was pretty young, only six years old. When he was finally let out—I was eleven by then—Mum announced that she was _leaving_ him. Well, my brother Jack and I felt that was rather unfair. After all, he'd just got out of prison for something he didn't do and his wife tells him she's divorcing him and taking the kids." Miss Harrison shook her head. "It split up the whole family. Mum emigrated to Australia and took my sister Audrey with her. Jack and I didn't want to go with her, though. Dad bought a very cheap house that needed a lot of work. We went to live with him."

She looked wistfully at the framed photo of her dad, now missing its glass because of Harry. "We worked so hard on that house. Dad said it was going to be our bread and butter. In less than two years he was able to sell it for _four times_ what he'd paid. And then that was it—"

Harry frowned. "What was it?"

She shrugged. "That was our life. Buy a cheap house that was falling to bits, fix it up and sell it. Dad thought it was perfect; he didn't have to go out to work that way, he was always home when we returned from school. But—but sometimes I _did_ wish I had a permanent home. Of course, the good thing about constantly moving on was that we always seemed to manage to move just as someone in the area discovered that my dad was _that_ Jim Harrison, the nutter who'd been kidnapped by little green men."

She sighed. "It was always a bit dispiriting to work so hard and then never get to enjoy the fruits of our labour. I became quite good at carpentry, including furniture repair. Jack was more mechanical. Plumbing, electrical wiring, that was his thing. And Dad was a Jack-of-all-trades."

"I hope you're not going to say he was master of none," Harry ventured tentatively. She laughed and shook her head.

"Oh, no, Dad was quite good at a number of things. That was how my brother got his name, you know. Mum used to call him a Jack of all trades before he went to prison, so when Jack was born—he's the baby—Dad said to her, 'Let's name him after me, then. That would be Jack.' His name's just Jack. Not John, nor anything else."

"I have my dad's name for a middle name. But my first name's just 'Harry.'"

"I noticed that, on the register, when I was your teacher. Not Henry, or Harold. Just Harry."

She looked at him very strangely; they'd been talking for some time and her knee was touching the side of his thigh. Suddenly she looked down at herself, as though realising for the first time that she could be dressed far more modestly. Her cheeks turned deep pink.

"Erm, I think I'll get dressed."

"Me too," he said reflexively, looking away from her.

"Oh? Do you have extra clothes?"

He looked down at his undershirt and jeans; he'd been sitting on his T-shirt. "No, actually. While you were out yesterday I washed my clothes and took a shower. But I cleaned up after myself," he added quickly. "In the kitchen, too. I only ate some biscuits, bread and a few little tomatoes."

She clucked at him like Mrs Weasley. "You must be _starving_!" Then she eyed him shrewdly. "I _knew_ there was something queer about the bathroom and kitchen. They looked far _too_ clean when I came home yesterday. But I thought it would be mad for someone to break _into_ my house to clean it. Well, unless it was my mum. That's exactly the sort of thing she'd do, but I'm fairly certain she's still in Melbourne." She gave a short laugh. "I'm glad I'm not out of my mind."

Harry bit his tongue to avoid commenting on that. She rose and walked to the stairs. "Well, I was going to go running, but I can do it some other time. I may have some jeans Jack left here the last time he stayed, and a shirt you can wear, so we can wash your things. You can use the shower after me. I'll try not to use up the hot water. And later, perhaps we can get you a few other things to wear."

Harry thanked her, then watched her go up the stairs with his heart in his throat. All in all, she'd taken it very well. He had invited himself into her home and she was behaving not only as though it was fine with her, but as though he was going to be staying for quite a while ( _and_ as though it was all her idea). He couldn't help feeling, however, while she was hanging on his every word, that she seemed a little lonely.

Harry leaned back on the couch with a sigh of relief. It was possible that he could have revealed his presence to her from the start, but it was rather late to do anything about that now. It had worked out. Harry couldn't believe his good fortune. He felt terrible about having to lie to her, but she'd accepted all of it without question.

The unexpected downside to this was, however, that he'd been forced to come to the unfortunate conclusion that Matilda Harrison was one of the stupidest people he'd ever met.

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	8. Expect the Unexpected

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Eight**

 **Expect the Unexpected**

 **#/#/#**

Miss Harrison's footsteps moved back and forth above Harry's head as she prepared for her shower. Harry sniffed at the sleeve of his T-shirt and made a face, taking it off and flipping it onto the couch with the other shirt he'd been sitting on. When the pounding of the shower ceased he walked to the foot of the stairs and asked when he should come up.

"Five minutes," she shouted back.

As he turned away from the stairs something caught his attention. He stared at the flap on the door through which the postman would make his delivery. It was rattling as though struck by a strong breeze. Suddenly a small, white-grey bird darted out of it and toward him. He fell onto the stairs with a cry, covering his face with his hands.

However, the wispy bird kept coming at him and seemed to dive beak-first directly into his brow, right beside his scar. He wanted to cry out again but his throat seemed paralysed. After a moment of shock, he realised that a familiar voice was speaking in his head:

" _Do not be alarmed, Harry. I have been watching you. If you have not already, do not tell the Muggle woman that you are a wizard. If you have told her, do not reveal anything else. I am attempting to remove the Aurors from Mrs Figg's home. I believe that a trip from Little Whinging to London would be ill-advised at this time; there are methods that could bring you to London quickly and safely but would, however, leave a significant magical signature that could endanger your hostess. I believe that it is best for you to stay where you are._

" _I have placed a spell on the house in which you are hiding and on the woman who owns the house; as long as you are in her house or in her presence you are safe. It is not as effective as the blood protection afforded by your aunt, but it is similar to the Fidelius Charm and is not something for which Voldemort will be looking. Please DO NOT RUN OFF AGAIN. I will continue to monitor you and to contact you should we need to adjust these plans. And whatever happens, DO NOT PERFORM MAGIC._ "

That was all. Harry recognized Dumbledore's voice, but he didn't know how the message had been delivered; the thing that had flown at him looked something like a Patronus. He'd never experienced anything like it; the voice had completely taken over his brain, echoing through his skull. He walked to the couch and threw himself down, breathing quickly as though he'd just run five miles. Dumbledore had finally contacted him—something he'd been _waiting_ for—and now he wished he hadn't. _I have been watching you._ Harry stood restlessly, fuming and pacing, pent-up energy flowing through him. _Spying on me,_ he thought crossly. He remembered Dumbledore saying that he had been watching Harry more closely than he imagined. And here he was doing it _again_ , evidently. Harry felt a rebellion well up in him; he wanted to rave at the thin air as Miss Harrison had done when she'd been screaming at her "father."

" _Watch me, will you_ ," Harry muttered darkly, gazing suspiciously around the room, wondering how Dumbledore was doing it. He was quite certain that Dumbledore had used Phineas Nigellus to spy on him the previous summer. No matter what it was, Harry felt insulted, _violated_ —but the moment he thought this his own conscience pricked him uncomfortably as he thought about the way _he'd_ been spying on Miss Harrison.

 _I didn't have any choice,_ he rationalised. _And I didn't invade her brain._

"Did you hear me?" Tilda Harrison's voice rang out suddenly. Harry shook himself.

"Sorry," he called back. "What did you say?"

"I'm out of the shower. I put some of my brother's old clothes in the bathroom. After you've showered and dressed we'll wash yours, eat breakfast and think about where to get you some more things to wear. When the shops on the High Street open I could go looking there, for a start. Or perhaps Marks and Spencer? Or Primark? It's a little more driving, but I don't mind."

He went upstairs and found her standing in the doorway to her bedroom wearing the pale blue dressing gown again, her hair freshly washed, pulled back into a bun.

"Oh. Um, Primark, I reckon. When my aunt needed to get me new trainers because Dudley threw my old ones— _his_ old ones, that is—into fresh cement, she got them there. I felt lucky, actually. She _could_ have made me wear the solid cement trainers. So if my aunt was willing to buy me something there…"

Miss Harrison smiled indulgently. "It's all right, Harry. We don't have to get the cheapest things. I think Marks and Spencer should do nicely. Sorry I even brought up Primark." She clucked at him for a moment. "God, it must have been really _horrid_ growing up with them."

He nodded. "Clothes were the least of my worries," he told her, going into the bathroom. Despite the outrageously oversized hand-me-downs, it was true.

She nodded. "That's also too bad," she said softly, watching him with a strange look on her face as he closed the bathroom door.

#/#/#

"You have a visitor, Mrs Dursley."

"Is it Dudley? Is it my popkin?" she said hopefully, her dull blue eyes lighting up.

"No, Mrs Dursley. It's—it's a man." The nurse looked uncomfortable, as though she wasn't at all certain that "man" was the right word. Petunia Dursley sat up a little, smoothed the blankets on her lap, and patted ineffectually at her hair.

"Is it DCI Daniels?" she asked, her voice quavering.

The nurse frowned and glanced into the corridor. "No."

" _Could you please tell Mrs Dursley that I am from her nephew's school_?" came a terse voice. " _I am one of his teachers and need to speak with her if, she is strong enough_."

Petunia glanced frantically around her, looking for a hiding place. After a few seconds she realised that that was ridiculous; you couldn't _hide_ from _them._ It was because of _them_ that her house was blown up! That she was in hospital!

As a good head of steam started to build in her, she decided that she didn't _want_ to avoid seeing the man in the corridor. She wanted to give someone from that so-called school a _piece of her mind_. After she'd been _ordered_ to continue to shelter that disrespectful, no-good troublemaker! Now this! Well, she hoped they were happy with the results of her keeping Harry, because _she_ certainly was _not_.

She pursed her lips and crossed her arms on her chest, glaring at the nurse as though she were part of a conspiracy. "I'll see him. I have a thing or two I'd like to say to him about the job that school has been doing with my good-for-nothing nephew."

The nurse nodded, her eyes wide as a tall man clad head to toe in dusty black clothes swept into the room, his pencil-like legs barely bending. His jacket swung low, nearly to his knees, more like an Oxford don's robe than a man's suit jacket, and his black shirt was buttoned all the way to the top. His long greasy black hair settled on his shoulders in what appeared to be frozen piles and his dark eyes were piercing and uncompromising above his beak-like nose.

" _You!_ " Petunia Dursley shrieked immediately upon seeing him.

The nurse looked back and forth between them before mumbling, "I'll get Mr Napier."

When she had fled, Petunia shrieked after her, "What good will it do to get my doctor when my real problem is that I have an enormous _freak_ in my room?"

Without taking his dark eyes from her he pulled what was unmistakably a _wand_ from his pocket and waved it in the direction of the closed door.

" _Colloportus,_ " he said crisply before putting the wand away again. He strode stiff-legged toward the bed and looked disinclined to sit—but then, Petunia was feeling disinclined to invite him to sit.

"They'll be back in a minute," she said, staring up at him fearfully. She _did_ still want to rant at him, but was finding her courage ebbing as he continued to bore those dark eyes into hers. She looked away. "They'll cart you off." Her voice shook. "And—and you're not supposed to—to do _that_ in front of me," she added, pointing at the door he'd charmed. She did not meet his eyes.

"They shall not be able to enter, nor shall they wish to. The moment they get near the door they shall suddenly remember other urgent appointments," he informed her smoothly. "And Muggles with magical family members are not included under our Secrecy Act."

 _Muggle_. How she hated that word! "Then I'll scream at the top of my lungs!" she said, her voice rising. He whipped out the wand again and she cringed.

" _Silencio_!" he said. She opened and closed her mouth like a fish, then held her throat with both hands, looking like she was attempting to scream. She couldn't make a sound.

Severus Snape looked at her as though he thought her the most tiresome person in the world. "If I allow you to make noise again, Mrs Dursley, will you—will you _please_ agree not to call for assistance?" It seemed to cost him a great deal to say _please._

She had tears in her eyes and the old frustrated, helpless feeling stole over her, just like when Lily was home for the holidays, especially if she brought friends along. _Especially_ once she was engaged to that _Potter_. Petunia sighed in defeat.

He lifted the spell and stood as though waiting for her to begin. She grimaced and surveyed his greasy hair, his dusty clothes and shoes, his wan skin. "Well," she commented, " _you_ look as dreadful as ever."

#/#/#

Tilda and Harry ate breakfast to the comforting sound of his clothes being swished around in soapy water. Her brother's things were only a little loose on him, and the jeans were a bit short. Harry felt confident, however, that the waist would fit once he'd had a meal. He hadn't realised how famished he was until she'd set before him a large plate of fried eggs with bacon—she'd bitten her tongue rather than inform the milkman that she hadn't _ordered_ eggs—along with a dozen little tomatoes she'd cut in half and fried.

He'd first smelled the bacon wafting up the stairs while dressing; it made his mouth water. She'd also cut the remaining bread into thick slices and toasted them. Almost before she released the plate Harry started gulping down juice and shovelling eggs into his mouth. It was cooked inexpertly, but he didn't care. It was _food_.

She ate yogurt slowly while watching him. Realising that he probably looked like a barbarian, he slowed down and tried to remember to chew before swallowing. She smiled. "Don't pretend you're not hungry because of me. I can't imagine a teenage boy living on next to nothing for as long as you have. I think Jack ate half his weight in takeaway curry every day at your age. Or would have if we could've afforded it."

Harry smiled feebly, his mouth full. When he had swallowed the last morsel he said gratefully, "That was fantastic." The toast had been burnt and the eggs were by turns rubbery and runny, but he didn't care. He had food in him.

"Thank you! I'll have to tell Pip; she says my cooking is rubbish."

"No!" he said quickly.

"What?" she said, about to put the dishes in the sink.

"I mean—you can't tell Miss Powers—I mean Pip—about _me_."

Miss Harrison sat again and scrutinised him. "Why not?"

"Because—if someone _else_ finds out about me and my school… Well, it's bad enough that I told _you_. I shouldn't have. It's _very_ top secret."

She raised her eyebrows. "And what will your 'people' do if they find out I know about it? Will they 'rub me out'?" She smirked, but behind her eyes was a touch of doubt.

He shook his head. "No one would hurt _you_. _I'd_ be disciplined for a breach of security. _Two_ Muggles finding out and I reckon I'd get double the disciplining."

"Two _what_? What did you call me?"

Harry fought the urge to slap his forehead. He thought quickly. "Erm, sorry. We—we use that as another way to say, erm, 'civilian.' You know."

"Well—I could _tell_ how you were using it. But I have to say—I find it rather offensive."

"Sorry I said that. Didn't mean to. I can see how you'd think it was an insult." He thought, _And the way some people in the wizarding world use it, that's what it's meant to be._

"It's all right," she assured him. "Just use 'civilian' from now on. It's still a bit—demeaning. But not _insulting_."

"Right." He smiled sheepishly. "Listen, I do want to apologize about last night. I drove off your date, broke your dad's glass—I mean, the glass in the frame—"

She smiled as she filled the sink with soapy water. "That's all right, Harry."

"No," he insisted, "it's not. But—but let me explain. I'm not judging you. I just thought, you'd had a bit to drink and might regret it in the morning." He spoke very quickly, before he lost his nerve, but could feel his face reddening as he spoke.

She turned around and smiled indulgently. "I said it's all right, Harry."

"It is?" he said uncertainly, feeling much better. "Good. I mean—he didn't seem—I don't know. Like the sort of bloke you would choose in the light of day."

Miss Harrison laughed and turned back to the sink. "You mean if I was sober?" Harry was glad that she couldn't see him colouring again.

"Erm, yeah."

Her back to him still, she continued to wash the dishes. "I hate to admit it, Harry, but that's where you'd be wrong. You see, it may have seemed to you that I'd brought home a perfect stranger from the club, but I've known Tom for years. Well, I should say, we met years ago. Lost touch a bit; the last time I saw him was at the end of our second year of uni. He left to go to an American university. We used to date, off and on. So last night—well, it wouldn't have been our first time, if you know what I mean."

Harry swallowed, trying very hard not to think of their "first time," but not for the same reason he'd been avoiding thinking about Gordon and Chloe.

"You see," she went on, "the club was _perfectly_ horrid. And I felt so alone after this bloke started chatting up Pip and took her off to dance. It was such a relief to see Tom! I rather latched onto him without considering whether it was wise."

To his surprise, _she_ was the one blushing when she turned around. "My dad caught us once. I was _so_ embarrassed. And Dad—" She laughed, leaning on the sink for support, looking like she might cry at the same time; "—he reacted exactly the _same way_ you did last night. He never did like Tom. And _then_ you picked _his photo_ to throw…" Harry couldn't prevent himself from laughing. "But you were right about one thing," she said, drying her hands. Without warning she stepped toward him and bent so she could kiss him on the cheek. "Thank you, Harry."

He was paralysed as she swooped toward him and away again, his skin tingling where she'd kissed him. "Wha—" was all he could muster.

"For stopping me last night. You see—I think you _were_ right about my regretting it in the morning. When I was with Tom we had one row after another. We broke up, made up, broke up again. It was exhausting. And all in the first two years of uni. I was relieved, frankly, when he went off to America. But last night he was a lone friendly face in a crowd of strangers, so I did something stupid. And as you said, I'd had a bit to drink. But then, I never used to have the best judgment about Tom, sober or not. Don't mind what I said last night; this morning I _am_ glad you drove him off. Thank you."

Harry smiled feebly. "Well," he said, a catch in his voice; "I didn't _think_ it seemed like you to bring home a perfect stranger and—and—"

She slapped his arm playfully. "Yes, you did! You were appalled with me, I could tell! But I didn't do what you thought. If anything, it was worse. I should have known not to get involved with Tom again. Stupid idea. Thanks for saving me from myself."

Harry grimaced. "Well, after he told that idiotic joke about how they choose stocks, I couldn't let you go off with him, could I?" He smiled at her again and she laughed.

"I'll have to take your word for it, won't I? Since I, um, don't really remember a joke about stocks and still have a little hangover," she confessed, wincing and holding her head in both hands.

#/#/#

"Thank you," Severus Snape said stiffly. "You are looking quite tired and worn yourself," he said to Petunia Dursley. She pursed her lips.

"So. Are you going to expel him from that—that _school_ for what he's done?" she spat.

"Though it pains me to admit it," he said, jaw clenched, " _Potter_ did not do this. He made it _possible_ , but he did not attack your home. The Dark Lord's servants—"

She looked as though she'd swallowed ice water. "The—the Dark—you—you mean—"

"Yes. The very same." He regarded her impassively; she was shaking and pale, her hand at the base of her throat. After a minute she flicked her eyes up at him again.

"You're not just trying to frighten me, are you? The way you tried to frighten Lily when you told her about those things that attacked my Dudley last summer."

"I was _not_ trying to frighten Lily," he explained as though she was the most tiresome person in the world and he despaired of her understanding a word he said.

"Oh n-no? Th-then why—"

"There are more urgent matters to discuss," he said brusquely, not wishing to reveal that _both_ he and Lily had been trying to frighten Petunia, being fully aware that she was eavesdropping on them when he'd visited during the Christmas holiday of their fourth year.

It was Lily's idea; she'd whispered mischievously to Severus, " _Talk loudly enough for Petunia to hear. Tell me something that will make her hair stand on end_." And the first thing he'd thought of was Azkaban and the creatures guarding the fortress.

" _Urgent_ ," Petunia said, making a sceptical noise and then clamping her mouth shut.

"Yes, Mrs Dursley. I wish to speak to you about the protection that is afforded Potter, er, your nephew, because he lives with you."

"Well, he can kiss that goodbye!" she declared stubbornly, crossing her arms so tightly across her chest that she appeared to be trying to squeeze herself to death, like a boa constrictor. "I don't care what sort of _agreement_ we had. My house being _blown up_ nullifies that agreement as far as I am concerned!"

He breathed slowly through his nose, gathering his thoughts and mastering his temper. "I am authorised to oversee repairs on your home that will not only make it good as new, but will make some things far better," he said in carefully measured tones, watching her; nothing he knew of Lily's sister led him to believe that she was immune to bribery.

There was a spark of interest in her eyes. "What _sort_ of repairs?"

#/#/#

"Here, try these on."

Miss Harrison thrust some faded jeans at Harry, as well as a T-shirt bearing the legend "Durham University." When he returned from her bedroom wearing the new-old clothes she walked around him, nodding approvingly.

"They're a good fit. The others should be too, in that case. And you seemed so doubtful about my measuring you. Aren't you glad I did?"

Before she'd gone off to buy him clothes she'd used a tape to measure his waist, inside leg, arm length, neck, and from his neck to his waist. He'd been particularly twitchy when she'd been doing his inside leg and was enormously relieved when she finished. He had thought she'd been oblivious to his discomfort, but evidently not. He certainly hoped she'd been oblivious to another reaction he'd had to her messing about with his inseam, but he didn't want to ask. He'd been embarrassed enough at the time.

"These are all right," he said, not commenting on the measuring. "Thanks."

"Don't worry about it. I didn't spend that much, either."

Harry nodded grimly. He'd wandered restlessly around the house while she was gone, exploring more thoroughly than before, as he was no longer worried about being discovered. Having perused her video collection, he'd learned that her taste in films ran to French farces and Merchant-Ivory costume dramas, while the old television programmes she'd recorded and saved were instalments of _The Good Life_ , _Monty Python_ and _Cheers_. He was itching to see which _Monty Python_ programmes she'd saved. He'd only seen a few when Dudley was watching videos in his bedroom; as soon as he realised that Harry's eye was pressed to the crack between the door and jamb he'd slammed the door hard. (Harry had made the mistake of laughing at the funny bits; Dudley evidently didn't understand that they _were_ the funny bits. He seemed to be watching the programmes purely for the occasional half-naked woman, which was something Harry was willing to bet Aunt Petunia didn't know about.)

"Oh, and I got these for you as well," Miss Harrison said, opening a white plastic carrier bag and removing a package of white boxer shorts, some white socks, a toothbrush and a comb. "For that lot I went to Woolworth's."

Harry took the packages from her, his face growing hot. _If my mum was still buying me underwear I reckon this is how I'd feel,_ he thought, irritated. During the last two summer holidays he'd managed to get his uncle to give him a small amount of money to do this himself; even the Dursleys weren't going to make him use Dudley's old underwear.

"I didn't know whether you wanted boxers or briefs," she said, nodding at the package.

 _Please stop talking about my sodding underwear,_ he thought desperately. _I'm not a child._ He forced his face into a grateful smile, hoping she wouldn't bring up the underwear again if he thanked her profusely enough. "These are fine," he managed; he wasn't sure _how_ to thank someone profusely for buying him underwear. If he had a choice he'd prefer to behave both as though the underwear did not exist _and_ had magically appeared. Either way he really wanted to stop _talking_ about it. He hated the way she was looking at and speaking to him, as though he were still a little kid. That morning they'd been speaking like equals when she'd thanked him for driving off Club Creep. Now he felt like an eight-year-old again and was a bit cross about this.

She looked at him with a new sort of very peculiar expression. "How strange…" She stepped toward him and he felt paralysed, watching her hand come closer and closer until it gently brushed his cheek. Harry was too surprised by the way her nails made a rough scraping sound to think coherently about what was happening. "You didn't look like this before I left. Or even a few minutes ago."

Harry was afraid to move. She continued to touch his cheek and chin. "Look like what?" he managed to whisper, watching her carefully.

"You need to shave. I'd have bought you some shaving gear if I'd realised. How peculiar. It just suddenly—"

She pulled her hand away before shaking herself, as though she'd been sleepwalking. "I can make another trip. I didn't buy any food earlier; thought I'd bring home a nice curry later anyway. That all right with you?" He nodded, still standing very stiff and still after her hand had caressed his cheek. She didn't seem to see anything out of the ordinary, however, and dropped onto the couch, folding one leg under herself.

"So—what would you like to do today?"

#/#/#

"And you will agree to take him back?"

" _After_ the repairs are done. And not until next summer holiday."

"Of course. There are—friends with whom he can stay during the remainder of this summer," Snape said, nodding. Petunia Dursley eyed him suspiciously.

"So you know where he is?"

"I do not actually possess that knowledge. But the headmaster assures me that Potter—erm, Harry is quite safe."

"Hmph! _He's_ safe. Probably not a hair disturbed on that sloppy head of his, which is more than I can say for myself! Not to mention my best friend, Yvonne!"

"I thought _Miss_ Dursley's injuries were more severe than Mrs. Martin's?"

Petunia grimaced. "Oh, Marge'll be right as rain in no time. She'll live to a hundred at this rate. Born under a lucky star," she groused, as though her sister-in-law had a great deal of nerve to be on the road to recovery after the attack on Privet Drive.

"Yes, well, good to hear," he said stiffly, not really caring.

"And I want all of his rubbish out of my house! I don't want any of it causing unexpected— _incidents_."

He nodded. "It shall be done." She was trying his patience and he wanted to be gone now that he had accomplished his goal. He removed the locking spell from the door and swept into the corridor without a formal good-bye or a by-your-leave. He quickly located a lavatory, and once he ascertained that he was alone he Apparated to Little Whinging. He'd convinced Albus of the wisdom of removing the anti-Apparation jinx from the village; it was hampering the members of the Order in their work. Another method would have to be found to keep Mundungus Fletcher from "wandering off" when he was supposed to be on duty, which was a moot point at the moment.

He arrived in the deserted lounge of Mrs Figg's house. Voices and clinking crockery emanated from the kitchen. Something caught his attention, however, and he went to the window, eyes narrowing. The woman he'd seen the previous night had evidently gone out and was returning. She left her car idling in the street while she raised the garage door, then returned to her car. She wore jeans and a plain white blouse, her hair in a bun, and while this could not be construed as provocative (especially compared to the dress of the previous evening) something about it caught his eye. Perhaps it was because he could see her legs again, even sheathed as they were in the blue fabric. He'd never spent much time observing Muggles. Spending what little time he had with Petunia Dursley was a chore, and he hadn't felt inclined to study the doctors and nurses at the hospital, either. Muggle hospitals had a queer smell that St Mungo's did not, a smell he associated with death. People rarely went to St Mungo's to die. It was unusual for the Healers to fail to find a solution to a problem, and even then it often meant a stay in the long-term ward, not death.

 _I'm going mad,_ he thought, shaking himself. How had he gone from watching the Muggle woman to thinking about death? She was starting to tug the garage door down and he turned away—but a second later, he turned back. She was _peering_ at Mrs Figg's house; there was no other word. A frown on her face, she shaded her eyes with one hand and started to push through the low hedge separating the properties, then shook her head and retreated. However, she stood in her driveway for several minutes, staring at her neighbour's house before disappearing into the garage, closing the door.

Severus frowned. _What was that about?_ Then he remembered the charms on the house; she'd probably thought about not having seen Mrs Figg recently, decided to look in on her, then found that the anti-Muggle charms caused her to choose to leave the property again. That was all. Nothing more to it. And yet—

He saw her face again at a ground floor window, frowning at Mrs Figg's house. He vacillated momentarily, as he found Muggles quite tiresome, but finally he pulled his wand out and, keeping eye contact with her (though she could not see him, due to the charms), whispered, " _Legilimens_."

Her mind was a jumble; he saw her as a small girl, holding out her hands to a man being dragged away by Muggle police; she was crying and being pulled back by a thin, grim-faced woman with light-brown hair. Then he saw her a bit older, beside the man who'd been taken by the police; they were hammering nails into stair treads, smiling. Then, without warning, he saw _Harry Potter's face_ in her mind.

He abruptly dropped his wand in shock. _Potter_. Why was she thinking about _Potter_? Yes, she was sure to have heard the news about what happened to his house, plus the fact that he was the prime suspect. Was that why she was thinking about him? Worried that Harry Potter was still on the loose?

"Severus! I didn't hear you come in," Lupin said, entering from the kitchen, carrying a tray with his dinner. Dawlish followed him out of the kitchen with his own tray and claimed a comfortable armchair next to the couch; Dumbledore hadn't managed to get the Aurors removed from Mrs Figg's completely, but they were down to one at a time. "We were going to eat in front of the telly, I'm afraid. Nothing fancy, just some fish and chips I picked up. There's enough for you, if you like." Mrs Figg entered, choosing a spot on her antimacassar-laden couch.

Severus's stomach responded to the aroma of the greasy food; he hadn't realised how hungry he was. The _smell_ of the hospital visit had temporarily taken away his appetite. He avoided eating at Grimmauld Place because of the Weasleys, but he wasn't in the habit of eating with the other members of the Order at Mrs Figg's, either. However, it _did_ smell quite good. "I'll have some," he said, as though doing them a great favour by disposing of it. "But in the kitchen." He felt that whatever they might watch would be a monumental waste of his time and yet stick in his mind for days; he'd had this problem before and did not wish to repeat it.

"Suit yourself. How did it go with Harry's aunt?"

"Well enough. She agreed to take him back next summer. After we've fixed her house."

Lupin nodded. "Yes, Albus thought she'd go for that. Can't blame her. The uncle wanted to toss Harry out last year, but Albus reminded her about the agreement. Of course, their son didn't go to hospital last year, nor anyone else. This is quite different."

"And no more than I'd expect from someone whose father and his closest friends had nothing but complete disdain for authority and _rules_ ," he growled at Lupin. "As if we don't have enough to do, Potter goes off to a pub on a lark, leaving the rest of us to—"

"Keep your hair on, Severus," Remus Lupin said with a grin that Severus wanted to hex off his face. "Albus says Harry is fine."

"If he weren't, it would serve him right!" Severus informed him through gritted teeth. "His arrogance endangered his entire family, an unrelated Muggle, and a number of other people who must deal with the ramifications of his actions!"

Remus looked at him, shaking his head. "You're as bad as Sirius was, in your way."

Severus bristled. "Do _not_ compare me to _Black_. And no, I don't care about speaking ill of the dead. If he hadn't been such a catastrophic influence on Potter—"

Remus Lupin seemed not to notice that Snape had spoken. "Neither one of you recognized—and you _still_ don't seem to recognize—that Harry is his own person and _not_ his father. Sirius was expecting Harry to be an exact duplicate of James and was disappointed when he wasn't, whereas you seem convinced that he _is_ his dad all over again and can't stand him for it. Honestly, I don't see why you can't see—and why Sirius couldn't see—that Harry is as different from James as day is from night."

Severus brought his face close to Lupin's. "This _proves_ that Potter's just like his father. If our fates are in _his_ hands, we are all in very deep trouble indeed."

"So, now that the prophecy has been plastered all over the front page of the _Daily Prophet_ , are you going to use that as an excuse to go back to your former master? Make sure you're on the winning side?" Lupin said evenly, but the threat was clear in his voice and Severus noticed that his knuckles were white as he grasped the tray.

"I did not become a Death Eater to be on the 'winning side,' as you put it, nor did I become a spy for the same purpose. I merely fear that, if that prophecy is to be believed, we may very well have no hope at all of ridding ourselves of the Dark Lord. Not if we must rely upon an arrogant, disobedient, self-centred brat to dispose of him."

"Harry is none of those things; if you saw him for what he really is, instead of someone who bears a passing resemblance to James, you'd know that. _I've_ had the opportunity to get to know him. And even though I was one of James's best mates, I'll say this: Harry is worth a hundred of his father and I'd have him on my side in a fight any day. I just wish he didn't have to bear this burden alone, and I shall do anything in my power to lighten that burden—if it _is_ in my power." Lupin's voice was very soft and even; he didn't blink or take his eyes from Severus Snape. "You were supposed to be teaching him Occlumency and you couldn't even stick with _that._ At least," he added a little smugly, "last summer Harry had the benefit of what _I_ had taught him."

"And what is _that_?" Severus sneered, finding it very difficult _not_ to hex him.

"How to conjure a Patronus. He was only in third year, too" Remus said, sounding quite proud. "I doubt that you've taught him a single useful thing in the last _five_ years."

"What's going on here?" a gruff voice said suddenly. Moody stood in the doorway holding a tray, his magical eye rotating back and forth between the two of them.

"Nothing, Alastor," Lupin said, turning from Snape and sitting beside Mrs Figg on the couch. Moody stepped very close to Snape and looked at him critically.

"When Potter was a baby, we didn't realise that there was a traitor among us, Snape," Moody said in a raspy, threatening whisper. "We won't make that mistake again. I've got my _eye_ on you," he added, closing his normal eye and swivelling the blue magical eye a full three-hundred and sixty degrees, making Snape fight a shudder.

"I'm no traitor," he said between gritted teeth. "The Headmaster—"

"Dumbledore trusts you, yes. He trusted that other one too, didn't he? Wouldn't have been in the Order otherwise. One of James and Lily's best friends. He was even a Gryffindor. You were a Slytherin—so you already have a black mark against you." His magical eye rotated downward, clearly focussing on the Dark Mark under the sleeve covering Severus's left forearm.

Severus fought to keep himself under control. "I don't need to prove myself to you or to anyone else." Pushing past Moody, he entered the kitchen. While he was gingerly piling pieces of fried fish and greasy chips on his plate he heard the gravelly voice through the kitchen door, and he shivered, knowing that he could still be seen.

" _Keeping an eye on you, Snape._ "

#/#/#

Harry and Tilda ate Indian takeaway for their tea and spent the evening ignoring the television. Technically they were watching it, but they actually spent the evening talking over its noise, their voices overlapping, only stopping when Pip rang. They both froze, but after a moment Miss Harrison shook herself and got up to answer it, muttering, "This is stupid, it's just the telephone."

She carried it into the hall, looking at Harry furtively over her shoulder. He strained his ears to hear her. "Not tonight, Pip. I'm not feeling up to it. Being social. What do you mean I sound breathless? No, Tom isn't here. It's true! He's not! Um, didn't know you'd seen us leave together." She glanced at Harry and reddened before looking away again. "No, Pip, I'm not getting back together with Tom and not telling you. Honestly. No, I wouldn't do that, and I especially wouldn't do that and not tell you. He's a pillock and I sent him packing last night as soon as I came to my senses. I did! Do you want to track him down and ask him yourself? Oh, Pip, can't I just want some time to myself? It's no reflection on you, really. Really!" She raised her eyebrows at Harry and looked exasperated, pacing with the phone pressed to her ear, nodding as though Pip could see her but not saying anything for a few minutes; Harry could vaguely hear that Pip was chattering on but it was too distant for him to make out what she was saying.

At length, Miss Harrison said, "Pip, can I call you tomorrow? I know, I didn't call you all day today and that was dreadful of me, I know, I know, yes, you're quite right. I'm the world's worst friend, but in my defence, I, erm, was a bit preoccupied." She glanced at Harry again and gave him a feeble smile, which he returned. They'd spent the day talking, watching television, and playing card and board games until Miss Harrison had gone to buy the curry. Harry remembered how starved he'd felt for contact with a human who didn't hate him; it had been great fun to just talk to a sympathetic person about everything under the sun. He'd had to be very careful about anything connected to his schooling or "unusual" abilities, but whenever she had tread into dangerous territory he'd deflected her with a question about her family.

When she finally rang off they went back to talking and ignoring the television, and Harry was shocked when he looked at his watch and discovered that it was after midnight. An enormous yawn overtook him and she smiled.

"Oh, good Lord, is that the time?" She grabbed his wrist and twisted it to see his watch.

"You were up later last night," he said mischievously.

She hit him on the arm lightly and said, "Don't remind me," turning deep red. "I still can't believe I brought Tom home." She stood and stretched; Harry turned away, his heart thudding painfully in his chest as he remembered what she'd looked like when she'd removed her dressing gown after her shower. "I hope you don't mind the couch again. If I were a proper hostess, you could sleep in one of the rooms upstairs."

"But I'd have to be a magician to—" He froze, unable to believe he'd used the word 'magician;' she was oblivious to his discomfort.

"I know, I know," she said, looking quite embarrassed. "I _will_ get all of that sorted out eventually, honestly," she said, as though he'd been chastising her for the mess.

"Maybe I can help you, since I don't know how long I'm staying. I might as well be useful. Aunt Petunia usually puts me to work every day during the summer."

"I don't want to put you to work!" she exclaimed, horrified. "I can't _believe_ them! Who do they think you are, Cinderella?"

He made a face. "You couldn't think of someone _else_? I don't really want to go to a ball with the prince. And he isn't my type, anyway."

She laughed. "I never knew you could be silly. You were so grim as a child."

Harry's heart leapt; she had spoken of his being a child in the _past tense._ A definite improvement. He shrugged. "I didn't really have friends until I went away to school."

"Ron. Right, you were telling me. He sounds like a _very_ silly person."

"And then there are his brothers, Fred and George, the twins."

"Yes, the twins! They sound like great fun!"

Harry yawned again. "I can tell you more tomorrow. I'm afraid I'm fading."

She smiled at him and he noticed for the first time that she had a dimple in her left cheek. "I'm sorry. I'll let you get some rest. Do you want to use the bathroom first? I can wait. I put your toothbrush upstairs already."

He brushed his teeth, trying not to notice her walking back and forth wearing her dressing gown over her nightshirt. She took pillows, sheets and blankets down to the couch for him, "so you'll have a proper place to sleep."

As he started to settle down for the night, he remembered that he'd had every intention of turning himself in to Snape that morning, which he hadn't done. He donned the Cloak and went to the kitchen window to check on Mrs Figg's, something he hadn't done all day, but he only saw the figure of the Auror, Dawlish, whom he remembered from Dumbledore's office. Harry did _not_ want to turn himself in to Dawlish, whom he didn't trust for a minute, so that was that.

He returned to the couch, taking off the Cloak and staring at the ceiling. As he drifted off, he realised that this had been one of the nicest days he'd experienced in a long time. There was a momentary pang of guilt that he hadn't thought a great deal about Sirius, _and_ he realised that he hadn't thought at all about how the Dursleys were. None of that seemed to matter now, however, and his only other thought before sleep overtook him was a curiosity about what had caused Voldemort's happiness that morning.

#/#/#

Harry threw himself onto the couch beside Tilda; they'd had curry again, as they had nearly every night for the previous week. Harry wasn't tired of it yet, but he feared she might be.

He'd worked up an appetite organising one of the upstairs rooms. She'd been forced to go out with Pip that afternoon, to allay her friend's suspicions, since she'd been putting her off for days and making one excuse after another not to meet with her or have her to the house. Tilda had been shocked when she returned home from lunch and discovered what he'd been doing. They'd spent every day since she'd found him in her home watching television and videos, listening to music and talking for hours on end. He couldn't quite explain why he wanted to do it (he would have felt embarrassed to tell her that _knowing_ the mess was up there had been interfering with his sleep), but it was good to be doing something useful. It was quite interesting going through the detritus of a lifetime, sorting through pile after pile and categorising the items. She joined him when she'd got over the shock, but even with both of them working, they'd only got the first room one-third done. They'd have to do more another day.

At one point, he'd come across an old suitcase filled with newspapers. He'd been about to bin them when Miss Harrison had stopped him. He frowned.

"But—they're just old newspapers—"

"No, they're not. I—I saved the papers with stories about my dad," she said softly. Harry really _looked_ at the papers now. On top were some sensationalist rags covering Jim Harrison's close encounter; further down were accounts of his arrest and conviction for breaking into Reese Hall; the Northrop-Reese family silver had never been recovered. Each story also mentioned his insistence on having seen aliens come to earth amidst a blinding green light. Harry read the stories quickly before returning them to the suitcase.

"Sorry," he mumbled, handing it to her. She tried to look as though it didn't matter.

"It's okay."

As they sat on the couch that evening, Miss Harrison changing channels every few seconds, she said to Harry, "You know, there's something you said that I never commented on. We have the same birthday."

He turned to her in surprise, then, seeing something out of the corner of his eye, said, "Oh! Football!" But she'd already gone past it. "I mean—you do?"

"Yes," she said, trying to find the match again. "You said yours is on the thirty-first."

"Yeah," he replied absentmindedly as the match reappeared on the television; the goal keeper was preparing to block a penalty kick. Harry clenched his jaw painfully, as though he were the keeper.

"Well," she continued, "that's also my birthday. Except I won't be anywhere near sixteen." He looked at her. She was turning quite pink.

"How old will you be?" he asked without thinking; a split second later he realised that he shouldn't have done this.

She laughed. "An old lady."

He grinned. "You will not be. It's not that bad, surely? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?"

She made a face. "How old do you think I was when I was teaching you? I'll be thirty-two. Twice your age." She sighed and leaned back, hugging a pillow, sounding rather depressed as she watched the match.

"Come on, Miss Harrison, that's not old," he said instinctively, even as he thought, _Bloody hell. She was my age when I was born._

She gave him a lopsided smile. "You'd make me feel younger if you called me Tilda."

He smiled back at her, nodding. "You keep telling me that, but I'll really try now: Tilda."

It was quiet for a minute; she didn't take her eyes from his face. The only noise was the television; they could hear one side singing songs very loudly, filling the stadium with their voices while the footballers played on.

Suddenly, she shook herself and turned back to the television. "You know what we should do," she said, not looking at him; "we should give ourselves a nice birthday by making a day trip to Brighton. If you wear that Cloak of yours I'm sure no one will see you leave Little Whinging, and when we get there you can go off and change into your swimming gear and _voila_! A person appears out of thin air! No one will notice. I love Brighton, but there's never anyone about to go with me for my birthday; Pip's going to be on a singles cruise in a few days—I wouldn't be caught dead on one of those—and my brother and sister are coming to see me before my birthday and leaving again. Mum hasn't left Australia for eleven years, so if you don't do this I'll just be sitting at home doing nothing on my— _our_ birthday—and you only turn sixteen once." She grinned at him and he couldn't help grinning back.

 _Could he go?_ The message from Dumbledore said that he was safe when he was either in the house _or_ in her presence. So that should be all right.

"Yeah. That sounds fine," he said, his heart beating with excitement; the Dursleys had, of course, never taken him to the seaside.

"It's settled then! And you know, it's a good thing that we started to clean out that room, so you'll have a place to stay when Jack comes. He usually kips on the couch, so you couldn't possibly sleep down here. He won't be expecting the upstairs to be fit for humans, except for my bedroom, so you can just hang about upstairs while he's here." She looked worried. "Oh, dear. That doesn't sound very nice, does it? Well, to be honest, he doesn't actually _stay_ here much when he visits. You won't have to lurk upstairs _much_. Are you sure no one else can know? Jack wouldn't tell."

Harry looked grim. "I don't think it's a good idea. I don't mind sitting upstairs and pretending not to exist, honestly. I've got a lot of practice at that. About fifteen years."

She put her hand over his, clucking sympathetically. "Oh, Harry…"

Suddenly, the doorbell rang and they both jumped, pulling their hands apart. Tilda stood nervously, raising her eyebrows to indicate that she had no idea who might be calling. He crept into the kitchen to wait, wishing he had his Cloak, but he'd left it in the bathroom upstairs. His heart pounded painfully in his chest as he heard her open the door and cry out inarticulately. He instinctively reached for his wand, but a moment later he opened his hand, hearing her very loud voice announcing the newcomer for his benefit:

"Jack! I wasn't expecting you yet. You're early!"

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	9. Special Delivery

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Nine**

 **Special Delivery**

 **#/#/#**

"Jack! I wasn't expecting you yet. You're early!"

Tilda stared at her brother, standing in the doorway looking as he always did, as though he had every right to be wherever he was, as though he owned the world. It was both a convenient and a strange demeanour for someone who was essentially a Traveller, going about the country staying with anyone he had any passing acquaintance with who would put him up for a bit while he scrounged about for odd jobs before moving on again. Tilda had thought more than once, _At least Dad lived in one place long enough to do up a house and sell it._ Jack Harrison had taken the travelling bug to a higher level.

"I'm not, Til. Today's the twenty-eighth. This is what we agreed. The others here yet?"

"The twenty-eighth? It's not the twenty-eighth."

"'Course it is. Look here, have you been reading the newspaper?" he asked, pushing past her into the front hall and picking up one of the copies of the _Times_ sitting stacked beside the door. "Doesn't look like it," he commented, examining its pristine state. It was true; for several days she and Harry had only listened to some news on the radio and television to make certain the hunt for him by the police was no longer of interest to the media. They'd been searching the papers for that at first, but stopped when they repeatedly came up dry.

" _The twenty-eighth_?" she said, her mind spinning. _Oh, good God. That means—_

"Happy early birthday!" a familiar voice cried. Tilda looked up and forced her face into a smile. Pip appeared in the doorway bearing a box that seemed likely to contain a cake.

"Erm, yes, Pip. Hello. Jack's just got here," she managed to choke out, trying to sound as natural as possible and wondering what on earth Harry was going to do and where he was. Would he leave? No, probably not, she thought. Not without that cloak of his, and it was upstairs at the moment. How could she have lost track of time so badly?

Pip was moving unerringly toward the kitchen with the cake. "When are Audrey and Nick getting here? And are they bringing the baby?"

"Little Jimmy? Yeah, 'course they are," Jack said. "How are you, Pip? You look more shaggable every time I see you," he said, giving her a smacking kiss as she passed. She gamely puckered up, then made a horrid face at Tilda behind his back afterward.

"And you look more and more like a gypsy every time _I_ see you," she responded, her mouth twisting, continuing toward the kitchen, where Tilda had last seen Harry.

Tilda stepped abruptly in front of Pip. "Erm, why don't you let me take the cake, Pip?"

Her brother laughed so loudly it made her head ache. "Take the cake! Well, we always did say you took the cake, Til, didn't we, Aud?"

Tilda saw now that her sister Audrey was standing in the open doorway, tiny Jimmy attached to her in a quilted baby sling. Tilda was torn between squealing and running to hug her sister and nephew collectively and continuing to bar Pip's access to the kitchen.

"Tillie!" Audrey cried, and Tilda had to go to her instead of taking the cake box from Pip, hugging her sister firmly and including the baby. She pressed her lips to little Jimmy's smooth, warm brow; he was sweating a bit in the heat, fast asleep in his snug cocoon. Something moved within her at the touch and smell of her sister's son. _Baby lust,_ she thought. She'd experienced it before, often at the most inconvenient times. And with her birthday drawing near she'd been thinking about it more and more—at least, until Harry had appeared. She hadn't admitted it to him, but it was another reason she'd brought Tom home. _Stupid biological clock_ , she thought. _I'm not even that old._

And then she realised that Pip had swept into the kitchen with the cake. She turned from her sister without a word, dashing after her friend, feeling like a madwoman.

"Pip! Where are you going?" she cried, stumbling and barking her shin on a chair in her haste. When she arrived in the kitchen she tried to appear casual about it, leaning on a worktop as though she had all the time in the world when she wanted to be doubled over, holding her shin and howling. "Erm, Pip!" she said again, her eyes moving about anxiously for any clue about Harry's hiding place. Her shin throbbed with pain.

"What?" Pip said in irritation, her hands on her hips. She'd put the cake on the kitchen table and glared at Tilda.

"Oh, um," Tilda responded, not having had anything in mind to say. "I'm just—I'm glad you're here. I'm glad everyone's here." _Now if only my voice would stop shaking._

Jack and Audrey entered the kitchen just as Pip was saying accusingly, "Oh, you're glad I'm here now, yeah? Is that why you've been giving me the brush-off for the last week?"

She looked guiltily at Pip and tried not to notice her siblings' surprise. Focussing instead on Audrey, she said, "So! Where's Nick?" She did not answer Pip.

"Parking and getting the baby gear out of the car. Why've you been giving Pip the brush-off?" she demanded. Tilda sighed; she wasn't going to squirm out of this.

"I just—I've just needed some time to myself," she said defensively, edging toward the doorway leading to the lavatory and garage. "If that's all right with everyone."

Audrey shook her head and brushed her hand over the baby's soft pale hair. "Oh, Til. Tell me you haven't been getting maudlin about your birthday."

Tilda stopped, appalled by the accusation. "Maudlin? Since when is needing some time alone code for 'maudlin?' I'll have you know I am perfectly fine with my birthday, my age, my marital status, all of it, so there's no call for _anyone_ to be 'maudlin' about anything." She knew she sounded defensive again, but she couldn't help it. She never lied about her age. Yes, she'd been feeling the pull of motherhood since she'd turned thirty, but she certainly wasn't spending time _brooding_ about it. Harry had distracted her from that, as well.

The three of them gave her pitying looks, making her want to scream. But she couldn't tell them that a nearly sixteen-year-old boy wanted by the police had been staying with her and that she'd been spending her days getting to know him in a way she never had when he was young. Now that she thought about it, she had also opened up to him in a way she usually didn't with strangers, or even her family and Pip. He'd prised secrets out of her she'd long ago forgotten and made her laugh more than she had in a very long time.

She shook herself, looking up at the three of them, at the pity on their faces. "Stop looking at me like that!" she said irritably, trying to think quickly. How could she get Harry out of the lavatory or garage, or wherever he was? She'd need the cloak. "All right, now, we're going to have a little birthday party," she said with determination. "Fine. But first I need to use the loo."

She started to leave the kitchen, but her brother put his hand on her arm. "Where you going, Til? Why not use the one down here?"

"Can't. Out of order."

"Oh, yes!" Pip said cheerfully. "In fact, it overflowed thanks to the ghost of your father."

"Pip!" Tilda said abruptly, trying to stop her. She wished she'd never told Pip that she believed her dad was haunting the downstairs loo.

" _What_?" Audrey and Jack said together.

Pip was laughing so hard she was having trouble speaking. "She called to tell me that she'd been communing with your dad's ghost. He made his presence known by overflowing the loo down here."

Tilda felt her face grow hot. In her self-imposed seclusion she'd never had the chance to tell Pip that she realised that she was just being wishful about her dad's ghost. When they'd gone out to lunch or talked briefly on the phone the subject of her father hadn't come up and Tilda had forgotten that there was damage control to be done.

"Dad's ghost?" Jack said, frowning. "More likely to be some tree roots stopping up the drain. I'll take a look."

" _No_!" Tilda cried, knocking Pip out of the way as she dove for the doorway, blocking his access. Everyone turned to her again as though she was mad. "Erm," she said again, "I mean—you can fix the loo some other time. Right now we're having a party. You know how you are—once you start working on the bloody thing you'll have it sitting on the floor next to the hole while you muck about for hours on end. This isn't the time."

He shrugged. "All right. It isn't the time. That's all you had to say. Tomorrow, then."

Pip rubbed her hip, where Tilda had knocked her painfully against the table. "Yes. You didn't have to maim me to make your point."

"Just—just everyone _promise_ me you'll wait right here. I'll be back in a shake."

She bolted from the room, praying to whatever god would listen to her, _Please let Harry be safely hidden._ She quickly found the cloak, wrapping it in a towel, and arrived at the foot of the stairs just as Nick was entering the still-open front door carrying a folded-up swing for the baby, several bulky pastel bags and a folding playpen. Tilda felt terribly awkward about not helping but dashed past, calling out, "Hello, Nick! I'd help but I'm in a tearing hurry," she said, brandishing the towel as though that explained everything. "I'll send Jack," she promised, crashing into the swinging kitchen door.

Once in the kitchen, she said breathlessly, "Jack. Go help Nick." A moment later she realised how rude she sounded, not having said 'please,' but she couldn't dwell on that and just barrelled on. "And actually—Pip and Audrey, if you could help Nick, too, that'd be brilliant. Go on," she urged, making a shooing motion at them. The three of them stared. She thrust the towel behind her; she'd been gesturing with it, not realising. "Erm. I'll be right back." She dashed from the room, down the corridor to the lav. A jumble of confused voices erupted in the kitchen, obviously talking about her very queer behaviour, but to her relief she also heard the kitchen door opening as the three of them went to help with the baby gear. She'd never felt shakier and less like herself in her entire life, and she wondered how on earth Harry had hidden in her house for even a couple of days without having a heart attack. Knowing that he was so close to them and that they might discover him at any moment had very nearly driven her round the bend, and her brother had only arrived fifteen minutes earlier. It had been the most insane fifteen minutes of her life.

She opened the lavatory door and heaved a sigh of relief when she didn't find him. Then she panicked. _He's not here._ Where was he, then? Probably the garage. She _hoped_ that he was in the garage, that he hadn't simply bolted and left the cloak behind. She opened the garage door and stared into the dark, petrol-smelling space suspiciously, trying to see into the black corners by the light spilling through the doorway. " _Harry_!" she hissed. _Please be here, please be here._ "I've got your cloak! Promise me you won't run off! I'm putting it here, on the bonnet of the car, under a towel. I'm sorry about all this; I'll save some cake for you and we'll work out what to do about the sleeping arrangements after the others have gone."

 _Sleeping arrangements._ Bloody hell. They'd been cleaning out one of the spare rooms for him to sleep in but it wasn't even close to ready. Anyone trying to sleep in there would be taking his life in his hands. And Jack would be on the couch.

She couldn't think about this right now. Tilda closed the garage door without getting a response, hoping that that was only because he didn't want to risk making noise someone else might hear. She couldn't hang about to find out, unfortunately, as she had to return to the kitchen and deal with her family and best friend, who probably thought that she was the last person whose birthday they wanted to celebrate. _They're going to think I'm barmy_ , she thought crossly, walking slowly back toward the kitchen. _Probably think it runs in the family, because of Dad. Lovely._

When she returned to the kitchen it was empty, so she stacked five plates and forks, along with a knife, atop the cake box and carried it into the lounge, plastering a smile on her face and trying to remember how to behave like a normal person instead of a lunatic.

#/#/#

Peter awoke when the foot kicked him in the ribs again; his Master had need of him. He lifted his eyes to the strange, pale face, the glowing red eyes.

"Lestrange is here, Wormtail. Meet with us."

"Which—?"

"Rodolphus," his Master said impatiently, as though Peter ought to have known.

Peter nodded and stood up from his nest on the floor, on the rags that constituted his meagre bed. He'd tried conjuring a proper bed for himself, but he couldn't concentrate properly lately and he was never very good at conjuring, anyway. Rubbing his silver arm compulsively, he followed his Master down the corridor to the room he favoured, the room where Frank Bryce had found them two years earlier, before his untimely death.

Rodolphus Lestrange stood before the fire as though he appreciated it, despite the stiflingly hot summer evening. He turned at their approach and nodded.

"My Lord," he said to Voldemort. He gave no spoken acknowledgement to Peter.

"So. Lestrange. What news do you bring us?"

"I have had word," he said without preamble, "that Potter was seen in Swansea."

Voldemort surveyed him thoughtfully and nodded. "I see. And you trust this— _word_?"

Lestrange nodded. "I do," was his only response. Peter's nose twitched; sometimes his sense of smell was still acute, even when he was not in his rat form. He knew that his Master's senses were _not_ so acute, and this was one reason he asked Peter to join them. He was a master Legilimens, as ever, but his other inborn senses were dulled by the magical experiments over the years, and by his near-death and resurrection. He glanced at Peter, awaiting a corroborating opinion.

Peter hesitated; the man didn't smell right. He didn't _smell_ like Rodolphus Lestrange. And yet—he was bringing them news of Harry. He was also uncertain of his own status and couldn't be sure whether casting doubt on another would help him curry favour or cause him to be cast out, punished. Explaining his doubt could be complicated. It was a delicate balance.

He ended up nodding; it was the easiest route. His Master noted his subtle head movement and turned to Lestrange. "Do you have any other information?"

"I need to get back to find out more," he said gruffly. Their Master nodded.

"Very well. I want—you and Snape on it. Keep watch, both of you."

Lestrange gave a small nod and said, "Yes, My Lord."

"You may go," Voldemort said, dismissing him with a casual wave of his hand. Lestrange nodded again and took out his wand, Disapparating with a _pop_!

Peter turned to his Master uncertainly. "Snape, My Lord? Won't he alert Dumbledore, to protect Potter?"

Voldemort shook his head; what might pass for a smile stretched across his gruesome visage. "No. Because Potter is not in Swansea."

Peter frowned. "He isn't?"

Voldemort's red eyes bored into Peter's.

"No, Wormtail. He is not."

#/#/#

A rectangle of light was suddenly thrown onto the ceiling of the garage, illuminating a section of beams supporting what seemed to be oars and a small rowboat. _She even has junk stashed in the ceiling of the garage,_ Harry thought. He crouched behind the car even more, wondering if he could possibly worm his way _under_ the car quickly enough to avoid being seen, if necessary.

However, when Tilda hissed his name and said that she was putting his cloak on the bonnet of the car, he heaved a sigh of relief. He was about to answer her when she abruptly closed the door and left again, taking the rectangle of light with her. He stood cautiously, blinking in the darkness, feeling his way around the car and biting his tongue when his hip banged into something hard and painful that might have been a lawnmower. He finally reached the Invisibility Cloak, throwing the towel aside and hugging the Cloak to him, he edged toward where he thought the door was.

He _could_ remain in the garage until the others left; he'd heard the voices coming from the kitchen and had worked out that it wasn't just Jack Harrison he had to worry about. However, he thought that one person—Jack—would be more likely to notice the sound of someone climbing stairs in an empty house, while a small crowd might make enough noise to cover his exit, allowing him to safely climb the stairs unnoticed.

If he could get through the lounge first.

That was the tricky part. Harry finally found the door into the house and felt about for the knob. He put on the Cloak and slowly opened the door. Moving swiftly through the corridor, not liking the idea of being trapped in the narrow space, he quickly reached the deserted kitchen. He tried to slow his breathing, though the thing he most wanted to do was to let out a noisy sigh of relief. The dangerous bit was going to be entering the lounge; he couldn't open the door on his own or the ghost issue would come up again, so he had to wait for an opportunity. Luckily, he didn't have to wait long; a moment later Tilda entered the kitchen. Harry was enormously glad to see her.

" _Tilda_ ," he hissed. She whirled, her eyes moving frantically about the room.

" _Harry?_ " she whispered, still casting about for his location.

"Over here," he said quietly. "By the fridge. I need help getting across the lounge."

"Right. Of course. Let's see…" Her eyes darted around as though she'd forgotten why she'd come into the kitchen. "Oh, right! I was getting drinks," she whispered. "Well, I'll have to back up against the door to get out with the drinks, so you can squeeze past me when I do."

"Great. Thanks. Need help?"

She laughed softly. "No, and you're not exactly in a position to help, are you?" She smiled in his general direction and his heart leapt at the sight. _Get a grip_ , he immediately scolded himself.

She gathered a bottle of wine, orange juice from the fridge and several glasses, putting them on a small tray. Sure enough, when she backed up against the swinging door so she could re-enter the lounge, she paused, holding the door open far longer than necessary. He slipped past her and heard her soft gasp as the silky Cloak brushed her legs.

"Ah, drink!" Jack cried, walking straight toward Harry and blocking his access to the stairs. Harry panicked and backed up into a bookcase near the kitchen door, letting out an involuntary grunt of pain. Jack stopped, staring at his sister. "You okay, Til?"

She smiled feebly, hoisting the tray and then forcing a pained groan that was not really similar to Harry's. "My arms are really aching from this. Can you take it for me, Jack?"

He shrugged and took the tray, nearly flinging it across the room when he felt how light it was. "This was too heavy for you?" he said, incredulous. Unfortunately, Pip heard this and strode over, eyeing Tilda suspiciously.

"A tray of drinks is too heavy but you can lift half an enormous antique desk?" she said sceptically, glaring at Tilda, her arms crossed on her chest. Jack gawped at his sister, still holding the drinks tray.

"Er, well, you know, I think I hurt myself trying to move the desk," she said quickly, holding her right wrist. "You were right, Pip, we should have got some help with that."

"Well, I only _said_ about a hundred times. But don't listen to _me_ ," Pip added.

Harry decided that it was safest for him to remain where he was for the moment as no one seemed inclined to go near the bookcase. He stood as still as he could while the others bustled about, opening the cake box and pouring wine. The orange juice was for Tilda's sister, Audrey.

Harry was fascinated to see her siblings at last; Audrey resembled Tilda a great deal around the eyes and had the same dirty blonde hair, but her nose was a perfectly formed upturned button, small and pert, instead of Tilda's longer pointed nose. Jack looked remarkably like their father and had the same nose as Tilda, only the length was even more pronounced. And the brother-in-law—

"Here you go, Nick. Have some cake," Tilda said, handing a plate to a sturdy-looking middle-aged woman in jeans and a large plaid button-down shirt. Harry froze in surprise. _Nick_ was a _woman_? She had very short spiky brown hair, not unlike Tonks the first time he saw her, and small round glasses perched on a nose that could charitably be called mushroom-like. She smiled at Tilda and reminded Harry a great deal of Professor Sprout when her round apple cheeks sprang up as she smiled. She seemed like a very pleasant person, but Harry was still digesting the information that Nick was a _woman_.

"Doesn't my son get cake?" Jack said, reaching out to stroke the top of the baby's head.

" _Nephew_ ," Audrey corrected him, taking a pinch of cake between her thumb and forefinger and putting it in the baby's mouth; he closed his lips on her finger and then chewed the cake for a bit with his mouth open.

"Son, nephew, scion of the house of Harrison. It's my stuff helped make him, after all."

"Jack!" Tilda said, looking scandalised. "Do we have to discuss this _now_?"

"I'm only saying."

"Jack," Audrey said in a placating voice with a slight Australian lilt. "We've gone over this. He's here because of your 'stuff,' Nicola's egg, and my womb, but when it comes to parents Jimmy has two mums. That's it. No father. You're officially his uncle, not his dad." She took a sip of juice and brushed her lips across the top of the baby's head.

Jack shrugged, sitting with a plate of cake on his lap and taking a large gulp of wine. "I know, I know. Still. Good to know the family genes are being carried on by _someone_." His eyes slid to Tilda who stuck her tongue out at him before sitting beside the baby, watching him eat with a dreamy expression.

Her sister smiled affectionately at her and said quietly, "Would you like to hold him?"

Tilda nodded and put her hands under his arms carefully, picking him up in the air and making him laugh, then cradling him close to her, a sigh escaping her and a soft expression in her eyes as she gazed at the baby. She finally sighed again and handed him back to Audrey after kissing him on the top of the head. "You're so lucky, Aud."

Her sister snorted. "Are you envying me now? I'd tell Mum except that she always _did_ think that you _should_ envy me. And I always told her how mad she was. Before I came out, of course." Audrey laughed again. "She had no idea how her plan to make me a proper young lady backfired spectacularly. All of those teas with the other young social-climbers of Melbourne and lessons in comportment, learning to get on with the 'right' girls. Well, if only she knew how many of the 'right' girls are actually dykes."

"Audrey!" Tilda said, admonishing her.

"What? I'm allowed to say it. And did you know Mum actually told me _you'd_ probably turn out a dyke? She thought that by giving you power tools and teaching you carpentry Dad was turning you lesbian," she said, laughing so hard tears were rolling down her cheeks.

"Is _that_ what happened to _me_?" Nick said with wide eyes, as though this had finally been explained to her. "I had no idea that if I got rid of my spanner collection and stopped working on my car I'd fancy men," she said in mock-wonder.

They all laughed even harder at that and Harry smiled; they were having such a good time together. Even Pip laughed at this, and he had come to think of her as the keeper of the _status quo_ when it came to relations between men and women. He noticed, however, that she didn't seem terribly interested in Tilda's brother when he would have sworn that she'd be likely to throw herself at anything male. Perhaps he'd judged her unfairly. Or perhaps a penniless drifter wasn't worth even considering and he _hadn't_ misjudged her.

Pip seemed fine with Audrey and Nick, at any rate. Audrey was evidently the only one who called her partner "Nicola." He suspected that she was the only one _permitted_ to use her full name, and that she did it out of affection. Nick clearly adored the baby as much as everyone else; Harry didn't think the child was out of someone's lap for more than five minutes all evening. The baby gear sat in a corner, unused.

It was strange to simply stand and observe the party—he'd completely forgotten about going upstairs—but he appreciated the opportunity to observe Tilda with others. She seemed a different person around her brother and sister, and whenever she had the chance to hold her nephew there was no mistaking the longing in her eyes.

When it was time for presents, Tilda discovered that Pip had given her a rather racy negligee. She turned the same bright red as the silky nightgown and Harry's mouth went dry, thinking of her wearing it, or perhaps _not_ wearing it…

"Erm, thanks Pip," Tilda said, stuffing it back into the box.

"For the _future_ ," Pip said, toasting Tilda with her third glass of wine; Harry thought she looked a bit glassy-eyed.

"Are you sure you girls don't want to tell the rest of us something?" Nick said suggestively, waggling her eyebrows. Pip guffawed.

"I wish. If I could fall for Tilda my life would be a lot easier than it is. That prat I met at the club last week _still_ hasn't called me back," she whinged. Tilda glanced down at the boxed nightgown, then up at Pip, and Harry had a feeling she was having the same thought he was having: Pip had bought the nightgown for herself, for the benefit of her own Club Creep. She both gave up on him and decided to take care of her birthday obligation to Tilda in one fell swoop.

"Well, thanks," Tilda said, looking more sympathetic toward her friend. "And it's his loss," she said loyally. Pip smiled ruefully.

Audrey and Nick gave Tilda a photo album. It had numerous pictures from their childhood, before their parents split up, and a lot of photos of Audrey growing up in Australia. At the end were baby pictures of little Jimmy with both of his mums.

"Oh, Aud and Nick! Thank you!" she said, hugging it to her.

"Did you see the one right up front? You started about half-way through," her sister said. Tilda opened the album again and even Harry could see, across the room, that this first page had a picture of their parents on their wedding day. He crept a little closer, so he could see better. Tilda traced her finger over her mother's elaborate lacy gown, over her father's smart suit. They appeared to be very young and very happy.

"Ah, well. That was a long time ago," Tilda whispered, her eyes moist. Audrey put her arm around one shoulder and Jack, looking a little less scattered, put his arm around her from the other direction. She smiled at her brother and gave him a kiss on the cheek before turning and kissing her sister, too. She smiled sadly at Audrey.

"Are you sure you can't put off your flight for a day at least?"

Audrey sighed. "You know Mum. She arranged for tickets for the twenty-ninth for a reason. That's what she does every year."

Tilda nodded and snorted. "Just so you won't be here _on_ my birthday. Because she'll never forgive me."

Audrey sighed and put her head on Tilda's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Til. I've tried to talk sense into her for years—"

Tilda shook her head and extricated herself from her siblings, starting to move around the room, cleaning up. "It's not your responsibility, Aud. She's the one who won't forgive."

Audrey raised her eyebrows. "Just out of curiosity, have you ever told her that you forgive her for leaving Dad?"

Tilda stopped picking up plates and glasses, her mouth very thin. "Well, no. The trouble is, I'd be lying if I did."

Audrey grimaced. "Well, there you go. You're two of a kind, aren't you? It's no wonder you don't get on."

"I'm nothing like Mum!" Tilda cried, clearly outraged. Audrey smirked, sceptical.

"No, nothing like her at all," she said with mock-innocence, rolling her eyes for Nick's benefit when Tilda turned back to the cleaning up. Jack grinned but Audrey kicked him, making him wince. Harry stifled a laugh and remembered the goings-on at the Weasley house; watching the Harrisons reminded him of Fred, George, Ron and Ginny. Missing the Weasleys suddenly hit him like a punch in the stomach, and he wished he knew how they were, whether poor Ron and Ginny were being made to do more cleaning at Grimmauld Place, wondering how the twins' joke shop was faring and whether they were all still trying to eavesdrop on Order meetings with the Extendable Ears.

"I can't believe you finally got all of these organised, Aud," Jack said, thumbing through the album while Tilda cleared up; he didn't offer to help.

"Well, if I didn't do it, no one would, since I'm the only organised one in the family," Audrey said without irony. "That's clearly something Mum and Dad had in common; living with Mum finally made me an organised person. I couldn't have tolerated her if I didn't take the flat in hand and do something about the clutter."

Tilda laughed. "Well, sadly, neither Jack nor I reacted that way to Dad's clutter. I'm of the stuff-it-all-in-a-cupboard school of housecleaning." Harry tried not to laugh; it was true.

She carried the plates and glasses into the kitchen and the moment she was gone, Audrey hissed at her brother, "Well? What did you get her?"

"The usual. I'm going to do stuff around the house for her. Sounds like that 'haunted' loo is the first thing."

"Oh, right," Audrey said, then lowered her voice to a whisper. "Does anyone else think she was barmy when we first arrived, though?" She glanced nervously toward the kitchen door. "She's fine now. Has been. But at first—"

"Oh, yeah. Definitely," the other three agreed.

"She's been especially queer whenever I've tried to come see her in the last week," Pip whispered irritably. "And I've needed terribly to vent about the pillock I met." She sighed. "I have a bad feeling he may be married."

"Oh, poor Pip," Audrey clucked at her. Nick put her hand on Audrey's shoulder and Audrey put her hand over Nick's, beaming up at her lovingly.

Jack sprang up and pulled a reluctant Pip into a bearish hug. As he squeezed her shoulder for emphasis she winced. "I'm still available though, love." He grinned at her but she sighed, looking up at him and then away.

"Yes. Yes, you certainly are," she said, as though this would be a worse fate than loneliness. Tilda returned to the lounge while his arm was still around her.

"Going slumming now, are we, Pip?" she asked her best friend, grinning when her brother hurled a small cushion at her; she ducked and laughed.

As Audrey, Nick and Pip prepared to leave, Harry started to panic; he'd been intending to go upstairs while there were still enough people present to mask the noise of his going. He eyed the hall nervously; there was no way he was getting past Audrey and Nick with their baby gear. Finally, they were gone and he crept to the hall just in time for Jack to turn suddenly and walk right into him. Harry backed up abruptly, falling onto the stairs, luckily still staying covered by the Cloak. Jack's eyes widened and he jerked his head about, as though he'd lost track of a fly he was trying to kill.

"What was _that_?" He turned to Tilda. "I thought Pip was joking about you saying you'd seen Dad's ghost, but—"

Tilda frowned nervously. "What—what are you talking about, Jack?" Harry inched his way up the stairs just in time. Jack flailed his arms about, trying to repeat the physical contact he'd made. His fingers closed on empty air, however, and Harry continued inching up the stairs on his bum, step by step, as slowly and silently as he could. However, when he landed on a creaking tread, Jack's eyes opened even wider and he looked up, right at Harry, it seemed. Harry stared back, a lump in his throat.

Tilda tugged on her brother's arm, pulling him away from the stairs, also glancing nervously in Harry's direction. "You've had too much wine. Lie down; get some rest."

"I've had too much wine plenty of times in my life, but I've never experienced _that_ ," he declared, pointing at the stairs. Harry still sat on the creaking step, afraid to move.

"I never told Pip I'd _seen_ Dad's ghost. I—I thought I felt his presence, that's all."

"Yeah, well, I felt his presence too. I bloody bumped into him," Jack insisted, his voice shaking.

Tilda shushed him and helped him settle on the couch. "Get some rest. You'll be right as rain in the morning."

"I'll need a hair of the dog in the morning," Jack said sleepily, making Harry think of Sirius, both the way he'd been drinking far too much during his last year of life and also making him think of his dog form, bounding happily along Platform Nine and Three Quarters on the day he'd seen Harry off to his fifth year of school.

"All right, whatever you need," Tilda said wearily, as though she'd say anything to get him to settle. "Good night," she said, patting his cheek. She went to the hall and started climbing the stairs; now that she was on them Harry dared to stand and walk up the rest of the stairs, going ahead of her into the bedroom.

As soon as he entered the room he remembered that he had nowhere to sleep but the bed, with Tilda, which was suddenly making him sweat bullets. What were they going to do about that? She'd said they would work out 'sleeping arrangements.'

She closed the bedroom door and hissed at him, "Harry? Are you here?"

He removed the Cloak, running his hands through his hair afterward. "Yeah. Sorry about that. He moved too fast."

"Ssh! Whisper! And you'd bloody well better move faster than him in future," she chastised him quietly. He looked at her sheepishly and she relented with a sigh. "I'm sorry. It's just—Jack's not the most predictable person in the world. About some things he is, but the rest of the time he's sort of— _random_. You need to be _very careful._ "

Harry sucked in his breath. "Would he come up here?" he whispered.

She shook her head. "No, except to use the loo and shower. He won't come in here, though. We're safe."

Harry swallowed, wondering whether this is what she had told Tom about her father the time he'd caught the two of them together. He started sweating even more.

She went to the wardrobe and pulled down a strange bundle, thrusting it at him. "There you go—that's my sleeping bag. Haven't used it in donkey's years, but it should be fine. Lay it out on the far side of the bed, so it's not visible from the door, in case he _does_ come in here. After all, I can't very well have him finding you in my bed and me on the floor beside it," she said reasonably.

Harry nodded. _She'd never intended for us to share the bed. Of course. What was I thinking?_ But he knew what he was thinking. He was finding it _very_ hard to stop thinking of the red nightgown.

He wore his Cloak to go into the bathroom with her so that they could both brush their teeth. As they were later settling down to sleep (she wore an old tee shirt and jogging shorts, not the gift from Pip, which disappointed him but did not surprise him) he glanced up at her, lying peacefully on the large bed, her face in repose.

"Good night, Tilda," he whispered.

She didn't open her eyes. "G'night, Harry," she answered sleepily.

A few minutes later she was snoring away. Harry smiled, turning onto his back, unsurprised by the snoring. However, he was surprised by how difficult it was to get comfortable. The sleeping bag was completely inadequate. No matter what he did, he could not ignore the hard floor under his body. If he had Dudley's sort of padding he might be able to sleep on a floor, but his sharp bones were a poor fit for this, and the sleeping bag was thin and insubstantial. He glared up at the ceiling, picturing her brother on the comparatively comfortable couch and hating him. Tilda continued to snore.

 _Well, at least one of us will get a good night's sleep,_ he thought crossly. He continued to stare at the ceiling until his eyes finally closed from sheer exhaustion and he forgot everything else.

#/#/#

If Harry thought it was difficult to hide in Tilda's house without her finding out about him, it was nothing to hiding from her brother, who was still suspicious after coming into contact with Harry in the front hall. He had to tread very lightly when walking around her bedroom, without his trainers on, lest Jack detected two sets of footsteps overhead. Tilda told him that Jack was constantly looking around wildly and making abrupt gestures, as though he would catch out the ghost of his father. She found it very difficult not to laugh about this; after Jack went out to find what he called "real" coffee, she came up to the bedroom, laughing uncontrollably before she had even entered, as though she'd been restraining herself for as long as she could and a dam had burst.

Harry was mystified, but quite liking the way she looked when she was laughing uncontrollably. He found it quite infectious, besides. When she had finally regained the power of speech, she told him (her laughter threatening to overtake her again) what her brother had been doing, re-enacting it for him with all of the wild gesticulations before collapsing once more in hysterics, sitting beside Harry on the bed, where he'd retreated to get some _real_ sleep after she'd gone downstairs. It was impossible not to laugh at her enthusiastic performance, though he did chastise her a little: "I didn't laugh at _you_ for thinking I was your dad's ghost." He didn't admit that he _did_ think she was a bit dim.

She wasn't the least bit abashed. "If you'd grown up with my brother, you'd be laughing, too," was all she said. He didn't understand what she meant by that, but he assumed that brothers and sisters had certain inside jokes about each other that outsiders would never get. (He'd experienced this with the Weasleys, as well, but in their case most of the jokes seemed to be at Ron's expense, and Ron was not interested in telling embarrassing stories about himself.) Harry certainly had enough things concerning Dudley that made him laugh in private, up in his room, that other people would probably not understand.

When their laughter had subsided Harry realised that they were sitting _very_ close together on the bed. They simply sat gazing at each other for a long minute before Tilda abruptly stood and mumbled something about getting him some food. She practically ran from the room. Harry watched her go, his heart thumping very quickly. Before she'd stood, her face had been so close to his…

With Jack out of the house Tilda was able to smuggle food to him and he was able to use the bathroom, but as he was about to step into the shower, Jack returned and she ran into the room to warn him not to turn on the water; Harry still wore his jeans and shirt (he'd been planning to let the water warm up while he undressed) and he was glad that she'd run in before he'd undressed, though a part of him wondered what she would have done if she'd caught him about to step under the water.

Despite his still being fully clothed they were both bright red afterward, and she apologised for his not being able to shower. "No, _I'm_ sorry," he said, grimacing. "I can't smell me nearly as well as you probably can."

She patted him on the arm. "You're fine," she assured him. A tingle remained where her hand had been after she removed it; he tried not to think about this.

Jack spent much of the day working on the downstairs toilet, and Tilda spent some time upstairs with Harry on the pretext that she was cleaning out her wardrobe, so she was able to smuggle dinner to him with only a little difficulty. When they went to sleep Harry lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling again, willing himself not to stare at her as she slept. It was finally sheer exhaustion once again that overwhelmed him and made his eyes fall shut.

#/#/#

Tilda Harrison opened her eyes, taking in the familiar shapes in the still room, bathed in a gentle grey pre-dawn light. _Two days_. For two days her every thought had been to keep her brother from realising that there was an almost-sixteen-year-old boy in her house, and more specifically, in her bedroom. What would Jack think of _that_? What would anyone?

She peered down at Harry; he slept with his mouth open, snoring loudly. She smiled; he was such a typical teenager in some ways, and yet quite atypical in others. His face was more angular than when he'd been young; he'd lost all of the soft roundness of childhood, and she'd found it especially strange the first time she'd noticed facial hair, though he hadn't needed to shave since. Without his glasses, the scar she remembered so well stood out even more vividly, the black hair falling back while he was in repose, and she thought about his poor parents, betrayed by someone on their own side…

Then the thought of Harry, the little boy she'd known and taught, becoming a _spy_ , of all things, made her simultaneously want to laugh and cry. She'd been able to get to know him far better than she had when he was her pupil and she had quite enjoyed laughing with him, talking to him for hours on end, and even cleaning with him. The one thing she couldn't reconcile was the image of him as a secret agent, a spy. She tried to picture him as James Bond but failed; in her head he wore an immaculate tuxedo and was smirking in a rather un-Harry-like fashion, but when he tried to drink the martini in his hand he spit it out abruptly upon realising what it was.

She laughed aloud at this mental image before clapping her hand over her mouth. Harry mumbled something in his sleep and started to turn onto his side; he grimaced and returned to reclining flat on his back. Two lines appeared between his brows and did not go away. She remembered that she'd found him in the bed every time she'd left him upstairs by himself and had returned; he'd always been fast asleep and had appeared quite startled when she'd woken him. Was he catching up on his sleep? Was he not getting enough rest on the floor? She was starting to doubt it.

 _Poor Harry!_ she thought, suddenly feeling terrible about making him use the sleeping bag. _Bloody hell, what are you afraid of?_ she demanded of herself. _Old prude. He's just a kid. The bed is enormous. There's no reason he couldn't use it, too. This is stupid._ She decided that she should wake him, invite him to use the mattress, but she also didn't want to stop watching him. He was definitely one of the most interesting people she'd ever met, which was sad, really. The rest of her life was unspeakably boring compared to the time she'd spent sheltering him in her house, and she certainly didn't remember opening up to anyone else the way she had with him, telling him everything about her life. He was a good listener and very sympathetic.

She continued to watch over him as he slept, trying to imagine him at her age, how he would grow into those sharp cheekbones, how he would hold himself when he was a man. _His arms are already quite nice_ , she found herself thinking rather against her will; _not really big, just capable-looking_. He slept in his jeans and T-shirt and it was easy for her to see his thin-but-not-too-thin arms. He'd only shown a little strain when lifting some rather heavy things while they were cleaning; she knew that his thinness didn't mean he was delicate.

But then she noticed something strange on his right arm; she lay at the very edge of the mattress and reached down, running the tip of her finger very lightly along the thin but distinct line. _Another scar_. This one was better camouflaged than the one on his brow. She could feel the rough, raised skin with her fingertip, but if she squinted while looking at it the skin was all the same colour, whereas there were times when Harry's other scar stood out so vividly he appeared to have received it only recently.

 _Poor Harry!_ she thought again. He'd had such a hard life and seemed to be so alone in the world, the Dursleys nothwithstanding. (Or perhaps it was partly _because_ of the Dursleys that it seemed to her that he was so alone.) She continued to run her finger along the rough contour of the scar on his arm, wishing she could make everything all right for him, wishing…

 _Dreadful things,_ she suddenly realised, snatching her hand away.

 _Oh, God. I am a dreadful, dreadful person._ She looked at his face again. _It's just that he's so thin. He wants feeding up,_ she thought, suddenly wanting to make him more eggs, or anything that would stick to his ribs, which were very slightly visible through the thin material of the shirt. However, the maternal feeling passed and she found herself looking at his arms again, followed swiftly by a feeling of disgust sweeping over her. _Bloody hell,_ she thought. _What am I doing, looking at his arms? Why couldn't I have a thirty-two-year-old spy hiding in my house?_ But she didn't. She had Harry, and he was going to be turning sixteen on the same day she turned thirty-two. It wasn't fair. She never got on this well with _anyone_ , and when she did, it was a boy exactly half her age. _Why couldn't I still be sixteen_? she thought instead before sighing. _Maudlin._ Audrey was right. _If I'm not careful I'm going to spend all my time worrying about getting old. Next thing I'll start considering surgery on my eyelids or some such nonsense._

 _THUD!_

She looked up in alarm; an _owl_ had just flown straight into the bedroom window! She watched it swoop in a circle and prepare to fly at the glass again. Her heart in her throat, she watched it smash headlong into the heavy glass, wincing when it made contact.

 _THUD!_

 _What on earth?_ she thought, springing to her feet, realising that if the owl ran into the glass again it could very well concuss itself. _What kind of mad bird is this?_ she wondered, even as she prepared to open the window; the owl was flying in a circle again, preparing to approach once more.

 _Mad bird? I must be the one who's mad for letting it in,_ she thought, ducking instinctively as the bird swooped successfully through the open window, landing on top of the wardrobe, hooting loudly. She glanced at Harry, who was so exhausted that he was sleeping through this racket. She hoped Jack didn't wake.

Then she noticed that there was an _envelope_ tied to the owl's leg and she glanced at Harry again. Was it possible that their government was using trained owls to contact spies-in-training? It didn't seem impossible. But then again, she _did_ seem to recall occasional news reports of overactive owls flying about in the daytime.

"Here, pretty owl," she cooed to it, uncertain of what to do. "What have you got there, then? Is it something for Harry? I'll take it for him," she tried to say in as soothing a voice as possible, keeping an eye on the bird of prey's sharp talons. She was shocked that this worked; the bird flew down from the wardrobe and perched on her shoulder, but didn't dig its talons into her flesh (only her shirt). She untied the envelope from its ankle and had no sooner done this than the bird did dig its talons into her shoulder, making her grunt in pain. It took to the sky again, sailing effortlessly through the open window. She glanced out at the neighbourhood for a moment, holding the letter, to see whether anyone else had noticed the owl, but this window faced her neighbour on the side away from Mrs Figg, and the entire street seemed still to be drowsing in the pre-dawn light.

She frowned at the envelope, which was a yellowing parchment colour. _Harry Potter_ was written in swirling green ink on the front. At the bottom edge of the envelope were the words _OWL Results_. OWL? _Well, she thought, it was delivered by an owl._ She didn't know what to make of this, but there was no question it was for him. She thought it looked rather queer for a communication to a spy, though. Turning it over, she saw that it was sealed with purple wax. The seal itself was quite elaborate, but she couldn't quite make out the pattern because of the dark colour. Creeping to her desk, she pulled out a magnifying glass she still had from when she and her dad had been stamp collectors, using this to peer at the design.

 _Ministry of Magic_ , it read.

She blinked, wondering if her mind was playing tricks on her. She peered through the magnifying glass again. _Ministry of Magic_? She glanced from the envelope to the peacefully sleeping Harry and back again, thinking about his explanation for the Invisibility Cloak and for the odd things he'd done as a child. She thought about Mrs Figg, who was decidedly odd, and how it seemed even odder for her to be a retired _spy_. She remembered the way Harry had seemed genuinely baffled as a child by ending up on the roof of the school kitchens, not as though he had done it by using spy-prototype trainers left him by his parents, but as though some ability he'd previously not suspected had suddenly manifested.

Something was clicking into place in her brain. Something was whispering in her ear, _This is why you thought he was an alien. And he was telling the truth when he said that he's not, but it's something else again._

She remembered also that he'd looked quite panicked when she'd said that he wasn't like other people, and shocked when she'd accused him of being an alien. _He thought I'd guessed the truth,_ she realised. _And then he fed me that load of rubbish about being a spy-in-training._

She glared at him, wondering whether he thought her to be the stupidest person on the planet. _Probably_. Her chest tightened at the memory and she felt like kicking something. _How could I have believed all that?_ She looked at the _Ministry of Magic_ seal again. Feeling suddenly cross and not very friendly toward Harry, Tilda Harrison set her jaw and opened the seal, thinking, _It's not exactly the Royal Post, is it?_

She withdrew a thick piece of yellow parchment from the envelope, pausing for a second when Harry snuffled in his sleep, but as soon as she'd scanned it she no longer cared about being rude and waking him, nor about how he might react to her opening his letter.

 _Angry_. She felt incredibly angry, both with herself and with Harry. He'd played her for a fool. _An utter fool._ She felt like a dunce and an idiot. And yet, she also thought—if he'd told her the truth, would she have believed _that_? Well, she had proof before her now, didn't she? In black and white.

Or green and yellow.

She strode to the sleeping bag, crouched and shook him roughly awake, holding up the letter so it was the first thing he would see upon opening his eyes. Unfortunately, she didn't count on his not being able to read it without his glasses.

" _Hunh_?" he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. Tilda withdrew the letter so that it was no longer touching his nose. She stood, pacing angrily, not caring whether her footsteps woke her brother in the lounge below.

"Wake up, Harry. A _letter_ has come for you." She glanced at it, at the strange but also strangely familiar turns of phrase. "It seems that you took some examinations for your _Ordinary Wizarding Levels,_ " she read carefully. "Isn't that right? And your _Ministry of Magic_ ," she said, drawing it out, "has sent you the results." Her voice shook as she spoke.

Harry gawped at her before fumbling to put his glasses on, still unable to do anything but stare at her open-mouthed. She glared at him, though she could also tell that he felt terrible for lying to her. She still could not help her anger, even seeing his remorse.

Harry swallowed, taking in her expression. He could tell that she knew he'd been lying to her. _Well, I can't possibly get in trouble for this, can I?_ he thought. _After all, it's because of the Ministry itself that she knows the truth._

He smiled feebly, still on the floor, while she continued to glare at him.

"So," he said with an awkward, forced smile, his voice pitched higher than he would have liked. "How'd I do?"

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	10. Disclosure

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Ten**

 **Disclosure**

 **#/#/#**

"How did you do? _How did you do_?" Tilda's voice rose on a screech. Harry winced at the shrillness.

"Aren't you worried about your brother waking up?" he whispered.

She swallowed, wondering whether she actually _wanted_ Jack to wake, come thundering up the stairs, find Harry in her bedroom, and react. She thought it would serve Harry right, lying to her the way he had. _And he was so shocked that I was stupid enough to think he might be an alien! This is the next best thing, isn't it?_

Tilda changed her mind, though, when she realised that Jack would think them _both_ mad if anyone mentioned the words "Ministry of Magic." _It would be Dad and the little green men all over again._ And then there would be trying to explain her former pupil sleeping in her bedroom, a boy wanted by the police a fortnight ago.

"No," she whispered crossly, relenting. "I do not want Jack waking up," she admitted.

"Then you mean _yes_ , because you _are_ worried about—"

"Stop correcting me!" she snapped. He bristled.

"You're not my teacher anymore," he said hotly. "And let me tell you, if there's one thing this last year has taught me it's that teachers are _not_ infallible. Not even head teachers." He paused, looking down and away. "Perhaps _especially_ not head teachers."

It was very tempting to ask him what he was talking about, but instead she brandished the letter, saying, "I have some information here that you want, it seems. I'll tell you what—for every piece of information _you_ give me, I'll give you something from this letter. _No more lies_." She glared at him still and he nodded grimly.

"Yeah, no more lies. I'm—I'm sorry about all that. The story about the spy school. But you have to understand—there are _legal_ penalties in my world for telling Muggles about magic, or showing it to them."

"All I know is that you made me feel like a right idiot for accusing you of being an alien, but you might as well be one! And there's that word 'Muggle' again. But it's _not_ just a term for 'civilian,' is it?" she said angrily, pacing, slapping her leg with the parchment.

He shook his head. "No. It means a non-magical person. And it's used with other terms, too. One of my best friends is a Muggle-born witch."

"Muggle-born? Do you mean—perhaps I should have you start at the top," she said more slowly, trying to get her breath; her anger had quite winded her. "You are a—"

"— _wiz-ard_ ," he said slowly and carefully.

This made her feel even crosser. "I may be gullible, but I'm not _slow_ ," she snapped, which seemed to have become her new way of speaking. "They're not the same thing. Being a _trusting person_ —and I _did_ trust you—doesn't make me mentally _deficient_. Though you clearly think I am, to feed me that spy-story." She struck herself on the brow. "God, I can't believe I didn't question that rubbish! School in Greenland, NASA…" She froze, turning to the wardrobe, where the Invisibility Cloak was. She took it down from the shelf and let it flow through her hands again. "What _is_ this? And where did it come from, if not a top-secret NASA lab?"

"It's an Invisibility Cloak. It really _did_ used to be my dad's. I didn't lie about that."

"But—but what _is_ it?" she asked again, feeling frustrated and impatient.

He closed his eyes, trying to remember. "Damn, I learned this for the exam. I _know_ this." His head in his hands, he said, "It comes from a magical animal, hard to catch—"

She snorted. "I can imagine."

He continued to try to remember, knocking his knuckles against his skull. "It's—it's from—from—a Demiguise!" he finally said triumphantly. "I _know_ I got that one right, too, on the Care of Magical Creatures exam."

She glanced at the parchment and nodded. "Well, according to this you got an 'A' for Care of Magical Creatures. But that's only 'Acceptable.' Tsk," she chided him. "You didn't get an 'E' for 'Exceeds Expectations'." He could only hope she knew about that mark because he _had_ received an 'E' for _something_.

Harry bit his lip. "I wasn't sure I'd get that much, frankly, but it _is_ a passing mark. Barely. At least I know I got _one_ O.W.L."

"So," she said, staring at the parchment, "they're a bit like the GCSEs?"

He nodded. "Our version. And we had to get careers advice before the end of the term, too, though I'm not sure what the point is before you know how many O.W.L.s you have. If I don't get a good-enough mark in Potions…" He looked hopefully at her, as though she would just _give_ more information away to him.

"Uh-uh-uh. This is a two-way street. I need more first. You know one of your marks."

He sighed. "Why don't I just start by telling you about how I first found out that I'm a wizard?" She hesitated, then nodded, and he started telling her about the letters that kept changing address, his uncle driving them across the country and then Hagrid coming to him in the hut on the rock; his first time in Diagon Alley, and buying his first wand.

"Wait a minute—this—Volde-what. You told me that he killed your parents."

"Voldemort. Right, but I didn't tell you that he's a dark wizard."

"And—and you have his _brother wand_? What does that mean, exactly?"

Harry sighed. "Can't I get to that in a bit? I've told you quite a lot. Can you _possibly_ tell me another one of my marks?"

She glanced at the parchment. "For History of Magic you have a 'T.'"

Harry grimaced. "That means 'Terrible.' I think. The twins—Fred and George—tried to tell me that it stands for 'Troll.'" He grinned at her expression; he hadn't got around yet to explaining that there really _were_ such things as trolls and that he and Ron had knocked one out in their first year to save Hermione. "It's not a pass, at any rate. I'm not surprised. I sort of—fell asleep and didn't finish that one."

She raised her eyebrow. " _Sort of fell asleep_?"

He started to say something several times, but when noise finally came out of his mouth he merely said, "It's—it's a long story."

"Hmph. I reckon we'll get to that eventually, as well. So, you didn't pass History of Magic, you barely passed Care of Magical Creatures—"

"They had some things wrong on the exam!" he said hotly. "I drew a _perfectly good_ picture of a Basilisk, and I _know_ about that. I killed one when I was twelve. The ruddy Ministry wizards who made the test had this stupid cartoon of one."

She dropped her jaw. "Wh—what?" was all she could muster. "A—what?"

"A Basilisk," he said calmly, rather enjoying her look of confusion.

Tilda looked sceptical. "Oh, come on. You expect me to believe there really are—"

"Basilisks and phoenixes and dragons, yeah, I do. I know you've probably never heard of a Demiguise, but surely you've heard of _those_."

"Well, yes, in myths and fairy tales." Her voice was shaking and her eyes were very wide.

Harry looked longingly at the bed. "Do you mind if I get off the floor?"

Tilda raised one eyebrow; his tone of voice was growing rather cheeky. She nodded silently and he extricated himself from the sleeping bag, sighing when he sat on the mattress. She felt the twinge of guilt again for making him sleep on the floor, though she was cross about the lies. _I probably would have done the same thing in his position, though,_ she thought. _I have done the same thing. How many times did we move to a new town, and how many times was I asked whether Dad was the Jim Harrison who saw aliens and lie between my teeth and say he wasn't?_

She sat in the chair near the wardrobe, crossing her legs and shaking her foot impatiently. "Comfortable now?" she asked, trying to sound snide. He nodded.

"Yeah, thanks." She grimaced; he had to start behaving _politely_ again. It was proving more difficult than she'd anticipated to stay cross with him. For one thing, she was having a hard time hiding her fascination with the information he was freely giving her now. She'd also let slip a laugh or two when he'd described his uncle's behaviour toward the many letters that had come to him when he was eleven, though Harry had laughed first.

"All right—tell me why and how you killed a Basilisk. And about phoenixes and dragons."

"Fine. But for three magical creatures I get three exam results, all right?"

She nodded. "That's fair."

And so, by the time the sun had completely risen, he'd given her the short version of what happened in the Chamber of Secrets, including enough information about Fawkes to cover phoenixes, and he'd told her about Norbert and the Hungarian Horntail he faced during the first task of the Triwizard Tournament. By this time he knew he had her thoroughly on his side. As he described flying around the dragon, trying to draw it off so he could swoop down into the nest and take the golden egg, Tilda was gripping the arms of the chair with white knuckles, the colour drained from her face.

In the silence that followed she stared at him until he had the presence of mind to ask, "Can I find out about more exam results?"

She looked startled, as though he'd woken her from a trance. "Erm, right, right." She picked up the parchment, which had fallen to the floor. "Let's see, I'm afraid it's another 'P' in Herbology, like in Astronomy."

He made a face. "I told you, I didn't finish Astronomy. I was distracted by my head-of-house being ambushed!" he said, remembering poor Professor McGonagall taking four stunners to the chest. "I'm not surprised about Herbology, but I did _try_ on that one." He shrugged. "I'm afraid a lot of plants just look the same to me, no matter how many times I draw pictures of them or repot them or whatever. Green stalks. Leaves. Muddy roots. If one plant has big leaves and another has small ones and the leaves are shaped differently I stand a _chance_ of telling them apart. Otherwise, no. Well, I also know a Mandrake when I see one, but that's something you have to learn that's common sense, else you could uproot one and die from hearing its scream."

Tilda made a face. "That's just a—" She stopped herself. He was shaking his head; it looked like it was hard for him not to smirk. "That's _not_ a myth, is it?" she sighed.

"No. At least, not when it comes to real Mandrakes. Wizards try to keep Muggles away from them, since they don't all believe they're dangerous. You'd be surprised what we keep away from Muggles for their own protection. Ron's dad—Mr Weasley—his job is to keep people from misusing Muggle artefacts. The trouble is— _he once enchanted a car to fly_ ," Harry said in a stage whisper, followed by a grin. "And when Ron and I flew the car to school we got him in a load of trouble and were nearly expelled."

She sniffed. "It sounds like that's a regular activity of yours, nearly getting expelled. One of these days it will happen, and then where will you be?"

Harry sighed. "That's what I was afraid of and that's why I lied to you. Now that I'm telling this, if anyone found out, they'd probably break my wand and kick me out for good," he said dully, pulling a long wooden stick from his jeans and holding it tenderly. "I nearly lost it last summer. It's a good thing Dumbledore stepped in."

"Dumbledore? Your headmaster?"

He grimaced. "Sorry, but _him_ I don't want to discuss. Even though he helped me avoid being expelled, I'm—I'm rather cross with him." He looked at his wand again. "I thought I was over it, but—that'll take time. When you've trusted someone completely and learn that there were really important things he kept from you—"

She looked at him levelly. "I think I know what you mean."

He shook his head. "No, you don't. I didn't keep from you that you're in a prophecy about Voldemort. A prophecy that says one of you will kill the other. A prophecy that says that you can't both continue to live at the same time."

She saw a tear trickle down his cheek and hoped he didn't notice her looking when he angrily wiped it away. "I didn't keep from you that it's _your fault_ that your parents are dead, that they're dead because Voldemort was trying to kill you, because of this prophecy. And because of me, Sirius went to prison for over ten years, and it was because of me that he died, and because of me that Cedric also died, and—and—"

She wasn't sure what he was babbling about except for the part about feeling responsible for his parents' deaths. She hadn't meant to break him, but the cumulative effect of telling her his secrets seemed to have made some inner defence crack and collapse. The next thing she knew she'd gone to sit on the bed and she was cradling his head in her lap while he went on again about it being his fault that people were Petrified and something called a Buckbeak being on trial and whatever a Cruciatus was, something about a graveyard and being tied to a tombstone while a grisly ritual was performed…

And every so often she whispered, " _It's not your fault_ ," as he continued the litany of people he felt responsible for hurting or deaths for which he felt he could be blamed. When he finally stopped speaking through his tears, there were only tears left, and he hugged her legs and wept for the losses and betrayals, while she told him again and again that it wasn't his fault, until he finally quieted and sighed softly, her hand rubbing his back in soothing circles like the mother he might have had if she hadn't been murdered.

"It's not your fault," she said again, her heart in her throat, her voice thick from her own tears.

"I know," he finally whispered. "It's _his_ fault," he said, a hard edge to his voice she hadn't heard before. He sat up, making her lap feel cold after his head being there for so long. She looked at the young-old face, distressed that he'd gone through so much in his short life. _Half my age and he's lived ten times as much,_ she thought. And yet she wouldn't have traded places with him for anything, magic or no magic.

"I know what I have to do," he said resolutely, his voice sounding deeper and more mature now. She looked at him quizzically, her question a silent one. He nodded in acknowledgement of it and then turned to the still-open window, as though his enemy might appear any second on the other side. He took a deep breath through his nose; it seemed that he'd just made a very important decision.

"I need to take the fight to him. I'm going to kill him."

#/#/#

Ginny threw another butterbeer cork at the kitchen door, sighing when it veered off and bounced onto the floor, like the others, making no contact. _Imperturbable Charm._ She sank her chin onto her hands again, elbows on her knees, as she sat on the stairs and waited for the Order meeting to end. This summer was even worse than the last; she was usually waiting all by herself this time around. The twins were included in meetings now, thanks to their innovative and extremely _useful_ product line, and Hermione and Ron didn't see the point to hanging about on the stairs waiting. They reckoned they could pump the twins for information later. Or at least that was their _excuse_. She knew that they were really taking advantage of the adults being occupied to go off to the drawing room (which was finally clean) and _snog_. Or snog, have a row, make up and snog again, which seemed to be their usual pattern. Ginny was beginning to miss the days when all they did was have rows. It was a lot less lonely for her.

Plus she hated that their relationship sometimes forced her to think of the two of them _kissing_. The idea made her want to gag, remembering how Michael had kissed, which was her least favourite thing about being his girlfriend. She was also not keen on actually thinking about _anyone_ , especially her best friend, kissing her _brother_.

She sighed, watching Crookshanks bat the corks about. Sometimes Sirius had sat out of Order meetings during the previous summer, keeping Ginny, Ron, Hermione and the twins company. He said he could find out what had been discussed later and seemed to like being considered young, rather than a responsible adult. He was also very interested in the twins' ideas for their future shop. She couldn't stop another sigh, wishing he could again sit with them on the stairs, waiting, wishing he'd never gone to the Ministry…

She hadn't even realised that the thought of Sirius had made her cry until the cork Crookshanks was playing with bounced toward the door and made a subtle _knocking_ sound instead of flying away again. _They've taken the spell off._ She swallowed and wiped the tears from her face, giving a great sniff, standing expectantly and waiting for the door to open. When it suddenly did, Crookshanks was so startled that he leapt onto the stairs and bolted upward, nearly knocking Ginny over. Her eldest brother stood in the pool of light spilling from the kitchen, his hand on the knob, grinning.

"Are you the only one? Are the others still in bed, or did they finally decide that they can wait to find out what's going on?"

She grimaced. "The second thing." Then she realised that she hadn't seen Bill since she'd returned to London from school. "And anyway—how are you? It's been ages! I didn't realise you'd come to this meeting!" She skipped down the stairs and he enfolded her in a hug, kissing her on the cheek.

"Yeah, sorry. I've been busy. I was the first one here this morning, actually. Sun wasn't even up. After this I have to go again. Duty calls."

"Yes, it does, Mr. Weasley. Let us not forget that," a familiar voice said; the owner of the voice stepped into the light and Ginny swallowed.

"Hello, Professor Snape," she said, as though she hadn't a care in the world. It was her usual demeanour around him, carefully cultivated for four years; she felt that he was rather like a dog who could smell fear, or like a shark detecting blood in the water. Thus far feigning a bit of confidence during Potions lessons (but not too much—she thought Hermione went overboard) had served to help her stay out of his way. She wasn't the best Potions student in her year by a long way, but he didn't purposefully mark her down and embarrass her or tell everyone that she was the worst, either. (This lot fell to poor, quivering Colin Creevey, who, during every Potions lesson, looked as though he was going to wet himself out of fear. A couple of times, in first and second year, he actually _did_.)

It was strange to encounter him again outside of the Potions Dungeon. She had thought it strange last summer and it was no less strange this year. She knew he was doing perhaps the most dangerous work of all, but she also wondered whether he was able to because he wasn't _really_ on their side. What if he was able to get away with closing his mind to You-Know-Who because he _wasn't_ really doing that? What if her entire family was in danger because of him? And everyone else in the Order as well?

She tried to force her mouth into a smile. She'd thought briefly of reminding Harry that Snape was in the Order, when they'd decided to fly off to the Ministry, but a sudden doubt had touched her and she'd decided that she didn't want the failure of their mission to be on her shoulders if it turned out that Snape really couldn't be trusted. Neville and Luna didn't even know about the Order at the time.

Snape nodded to her very formally, his face impassive. "Good morning, Miss Weasley. I am afraid your brother and I must be leaving."

She pressed herself to the stairwell wall to get out of their way. "Yes, Bill said," she muttered. As he passed he looked in her eyes again, making her shiver. _Is he reading my mind_? she wondered. _Does he know that I didn't trust him enough to mention his name to Harry before we flew off to the Ministry?_ She thought of Sirius again. _Perhaps he'd still be alive if I'd thought to say something about Snape. Perhaps it's all my fault that he's dead._

The thought made her stomach clench, but she didn't have the opportunity to spiral downward into abject grief again before the twins emerged from the doorway and accosted her. "Oi, Ginny! You can come in now. Meeting's over. Want some butterbeer?" George asked cheerfully.

She shrugged and surreptitiously wiped a tear from her eye again. "Yes, thanks." She followed them into the kitchen, hoping that talking to the twins could take her mind off Sirius. Her mother was putting a hot mug of tea down before her father, seated at the long table. He gave Ginny a warm smile and held out his hand, pulling her into a one-armed hug and kissing her on the cheek; she didn't even need to bend down for him to do this, as she hadn't grown any taller in the previous year.

"There, now, it wasn't so bad waiting to get into the kitchen, now was it?" he asked cheerfully, sipping his tea. Ginny fought the urge to roll her eyes; her father was either quite clueless or pretending to be, she could never work out which it was. She wasn't wanting merely to enter the kitchen, she wanted to be in on the meeting itself. Ginny hadn't particularly wanted to be in the kitchen at all, not being a bit hungry, but now that she was, she took the butterbeer Fred handed her and sat beside him.

In a moment, her mother was upon them. "Just what do you two think you're doing, giving Ginny butterbeer for breakfast?"

"Sorry," Fred said with unusual deference. "Since you already gave us our breakfasts, I forgot she hadn't had any."

Ginny looked sheepishly at her mother and allowed a plate of eggs and bacon to be pushed on her, though she couldn't bear the thought of eating. After her mother moved to the sink, her back to her daughter, Ginny continued to surreptitiously drink the butterbeer and merely pushed the eggs around her plate, while Fred and George made short work of her bacon.

She watched her parents carefully; when he'd finished his tea, her father rose and joined her mother at the sink, helping with the washing up, chatting about inconsequential things at work. Ginny continued to watch them, then lowered the bottle from her lips slightly and whispered out of the corner of her mouth, " _So, what did you find out_?"

Fred grimaced. He took a swig of butterbeer himself, then shrugged. "Sorry, Gin. Can't tell. Top secret."

She nearly slammed her bottle down on the table, but stopped herself in time. " _What do you mean 'can't'_?"

George flipped a bottle cap and caught it, flipped and caught. "It's not like when we were eavesdropping on meetings, Ginny. We're _part_ of the Order now," he said with what she would think of as comic dignity were it not for the fact that he really did seem serious about not telling her what had happened.

"You're joking," she said quietly, watching her parents out of the corner of her eye. "After letting me see all of your products before anyone else? I was the first one to try the vomiting sweet." She was finding it very difficult not to scowl. And why couldn't Ron and Hermione come up for air for once? She could use some back-up.

Fred shook his head, taking a large gulp of butterbeer. "Can't do it, Ginny. Sorry."

 _You don't sound bloody sorry,_ she thought crossly. She thought of Snape going off with Bill to work for the Order. What if Bill was going to his death? Or what if Snape was really a spy but Voldemort _knew_ that? This thought alarmed her; it honestly hadn't occurred to her before. Perhaps he _could_ be trusted but his cover was blown.

" _Fred! George!_ " she whispered. "I just thought of something; are we absolutely _certain_ that You-Know-Who believes Snape is loyal to him?"

She almost wished she hadn't asked as soon as she saw their faces. Fred stood and dragged her to her feet, making her drop her butterbeer and spill it all over the table. George quickly pulled out his wand and cleared it up. As they were leaving the kitchen—Ginny being dragged by both Fred and George—their father called over his shoulder, "What've you got planned today? Going to the shop soon, boys?"

"Yeah!" George yelled when they were on the stairs. "See you later!"

" _Fred_!" she hissed, struggling to free her arm from his strong grip and stumbling on the stairs as he continued to pull her along. "Bloody hell, are you trying to rip my arm off?"

But he didn't stop until they were outside the drawing room. "I put the Imperturbable Charm on the door myself, Ginny so how do you know about Snape?" Fred demanded, still not releasing her arm.

" _Let me go!_ " she cried, stomping on his foot; he cried out and let go of her at last, doubling over in pain.

" _Ginny_ ," George hissed. "Seriously—how did you know? Bill's the one who reported that at the meeting, and _he_ got it from Dumbledore, who wouldn't tell Bill where he'd heard it."

She looked grimly at them; Fred stood again, wincing. "I took a shot in the dark. When Snape and Bill were leaving I was thinking about Snape perhaps still being on You-Know-Who's side, and he gave me this _look_ , like he could tell what—"

"He probably could," Fred confirmed, nodding. "Wish I knew about that in first year."

"But he didn't look like he had something to _hide_. He looked like—oh, I don't know. Like he was tired of trying to prove himself. And then I thought, when we were down in the kitchen, what if he really is loyal to Dumbledore, but You-Know-Who _knows_ that? What if he's just pretending to have taken him back as a Death Eater? Don't you remember what Harry said _he_ said?"

George narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

Ginny sighed in exasperation. "Harry told Rita Skeeter everything. The _Quibbler_ article. Harry described You-Know-Who talking about the Death Eaters. He said one had left him forever. He said that one would die. Doesn't that sound like Snape to you?"

Fred shrugged. "Yeah, but we found out in our very first Order meeting—which I _can_ tell you about, a little—that Snape convinced him that he _hadn't_ left him forever, that he was back, that he was sorry for covering up his loyalty, years ago. He said he convinced You-Know-Who that having a loyal Death Eater at Hogwarts was a really useful thing."

"But are we _certain_ that he convinced him of that or is there a chance that You-Know-Who knows he was lying?"

George shook his head. "Well, that's the question, isn't it? Hard to say."

Fred snorted. "You know, mate, at this rate we might as well have told her all about the meeting. She guessed anyway."

"Good point. All right—new policy," George said in an officious voice. "No point in not telling Ginny about meetings, since she's too clever by far and will just guess anyway." He grinned at her but it didn't make her feel any better.

"Anyway," Fred said, putting his arm around her shoulders, "I _do_ know Snape is loyal to Dumbledore. I mean, you know what he did when you went to the Ministry, don't you?" Ginny blinked, feeling stupid, shaking her head. "He's the one sent Dumbledore and the other members of the Order after you. That's why they showed up."

She bit her lip. _That's why Sirius died,_ she thought. She knew this was ungracious, but she missed Sirius dreadfully since returning to number twelve, Grimmauld Place. _Of course, if they hadn't come to the Ministry, the six of us would probably be dead._

"Snape saved your life, Gin," Fred said, raising his eyebrows at her.

She sighed and slumped against the drawing room door. "You're probably right. But if You-Know-Who is just _pretending_ to trust him, who's going to save _Snape's_ life?"

#/#/#

Tilda's breath caught as she looked at Harry's profile; he stared bleakly out the open window. _He thinks he has to kill or be killed,_ she thought, her heart in her throat. She couldn't even begin to comprehend feeling that way at sixteen, as though the entire world depended upon you for its salvation. In Harry's case, it _did_. And yes, a few minutes ago he'd been a blubbering mess on her lap, like any child who'd experienced great loss. But now… She had the distinct impression that he was done with tears. His eyes looked quite hard and he was even a bit frightening. She felt it necessary to back up a few inches, give him space.

"Erm," she began awkwardly, "do you want to use the loo first?" It seemed a terribly mundane thing to ask, and yet welcome for all its ordinariness.

He blinked and turned to her as though surprised that she was there. "Oh, right. It's—" He glanced at the clock. "Blimey. Already seven-thirty. No wonder it feels like my bladder's going to explode."

She forced a laugh and stood, crossing her arms nervously, for want of anything else to do with them. She wasn't sure why, but he made her very, very uneasy now. There was absolutely nothing childlike about him anymore. She wasn't prepared for that; she'd been sheltering a boy in her home, a child. Now it seemed she'd actually been sheltering a man and she didn't know how she felt about that. She'd always been at her ease around children; it was adults who unsettled her. After she'd realised this it was easy to choose teaching children as her profession.

"Let me check on Jack first," she said. "Can you hold it for another minute?"

He grimaced. "Maybe."

She tore her eyes away from his face and left the room, aware of her stomach doing flips inside her. What had changed? Absolutely nothing. And yet—absolutely everything.

She crept carefully down the stairs, but when she was halfway down she had a clear view of the lounge and could see that the couch was empty. She sped up, practically running into the room, finding no trace of her brother anywhere about. Then she noticed a hastily-scrawled note amongst some rubbish on a table.

 _Til—_

 _Got to go. The loo is fixed and I also took care of the dripping tap in the kitchen. Don't know why you don't learn some plumbing but I reckon you wouldn't need your little brother anymore if you did. Happy birthday. I know you like having this time to yourself. Going up to Newcastle for a bit, got a job promised to me. I'll ring you up when I get there._

 _Jack_

Usually the way her brother just picked up and moved from place to place with no notice irked her no end; this time it was a godsend and she couldn't help the whoop that escaped her as she ran up the stairs, waving the note like a flag.

Harry stood in the doorway of the bedroom, looking puzzled. "Jack's moved on already, Harry!" She grinned at him and he grinned back, which relieved her greatly; after the confess-and-cry-fest she'd wondered whether she'd ever see him smile again.

She understood now. She understood why he was so different when he was growing up, why he was mystified about his own abilities. And she understood why he didn't trust her immediately and ask for shelter instead of lurking in her house. She understood so much.

But as she watched the bathroom door close, she also felt unaccountably exposed; she'd talked to him about so many things since she'd found him in her house, things she would not normally tell a man; somehow it had seemed safe to tell him, to tell a _boy_. But now she wondered whether he could really be considered a boy. He had a _man's_ burden, certainly. It was so confusing.

After they'd eaten breakfast he helped her clean up, as he had done before her brother had come to stay. They stood side-by-side as usual, washing and drying the dishes, and she got a lump in her throat as she considered for the first time the gentle domesticity of this activity. Harry didn't seem to mind it; his face looked very peaceful as he wiped each item. When they were nearly finished, though, his face looked lit up with hope. And a plan.

"Tilda," he said, turning to her with a heartbreaking smile, "do you think we could—"

"No!" she said immediately, not knowing what he was going to say but feeling this was the safest answer.

His face fell. "Oh. I was just going to say, according to the message Dumbledore sent me, I'm safe when I'm with you or in your house, because of a protection spell he used—"

"Wait, back up," she said, closing her eyes, feeling a headache starting. "Dumbledon—"

"Dumbledore," he said, laughing.

" _Your headmaster,_ " she said instead, still not caring for being corrected, "put a _spell_ on me? And my house?" Her voice rose as she spoke.

Harry nodded, not the least bit put-out. "Yeah. For my protection. Oh, by the way, he knows I'm here. He thinks this is the safest place for me right now. That may change, but that's why I didn't leave when your family came—well, that and you still had my Cloak. But if I really _had_ to leave it I would have. I do have other magical things back on Privet Drive. Which is what I was going to ask—do you think you could come with me to get the rest of my stuff? We could both wear the Cloak. It's really big." At the look on her face, he hastily said, "N-not that _you're_ really big—"

She crossed her arms and drew her mouth into a line. "I don't know—"

"Well, I'd like to have my own clothes again, for a start. Not that the stuff you bought isn't great. You know how it is. And technically, I have summer homework to do. I'm supposed to be reading, writing a few essays. And now that I know how I did on my O.W.L.s—" He stopped. "Oh, wait. You never _did_ tell me the rest of my results."

She relented and pulled the parchment from her jeans pocket, where she'd put it after she'd dressed. He looked like he was trying very hard not to snatch it from her grasp and unfolded it with shaking hands. As his eyes scanned down the page his face became happier and happier and she couldn't resist feeling happy for him as well.

" _Eight!_ I got eight O.W.L.s!" he crowed. "It would only be five, but apparently they give separate marks for the written and practical tests on Transfiguration, Charms and Defence Against the Dark Arts." He made a sceptical noise. "I should have known Snape would see to it we only get a combined mark for Potions. Makes it harder to get an 'Outstanding'— _which I did!_ " he cried, throwing his arms around her. She returned the hug awkwardly, patting his back, feeling very happy for him, and yet—

When he released her he didn't seem to have noticed her discomfort. "I _knew_ I could do that stuff if he wasn't hanging over me, distracting me and making me bollix it up!" He beamed happily at the parchment again. "Eight! I wonder how the others did," he added. "I'll bet Hermione got at least twelve. I think she _could_ have got thirteen, since she's taking an extra subject. I can't see her _not_ getting a pass in anything."

Tilda laughed. "Not from what you've told me about her, no. I'm glad you're happy. Eight is good, then? I have no way of knowing."

His face fell again. "And I wonder how Ron did. I mean, we usually perform about the same, but he was really down after taking some of his exams. As it was, I only got 'Acceptable' for Care of Magical Creatures and on the written exams for Charms and Transfiguration. The only other 'Outstanding' I got besides Potions was on the practical exam for Defence Against the Dark Arts, though I _did_ get 'Exceeds Expectations' for the written one, and for the practical exams for Transfiguration and Charms. I hope Ron got into N.E.W.T.-level Potions. Otherwise…"

"What?"

"Well, otherwise he won't be able to apply for Auror training. You need a N.E.W.T. in Potions for that."

"No, I meant what's bloody N.E.W.T.-level Potions? How many poor salamanders are you planning to slaughter in the next two years, anyway?" She wasn't an animal rights activist but did contribute money to a group intent on preventing cosmetics being tested on animals. It seemed a frivolous reason to torture poor little rabbits and mice.

Harry burst out laughing, then saw the look on her face and tried to stifle it. "Oh, erm, you're _serious_. You don't understand—N.E.W.T. stands for Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests. Taken near the end of seventh year."

Comprehension dawned on her face. "Oooooh," she said, "like A-levels."

He nodded. "Right. Only there's no uni for us after Hogwarts. I reckon Auror training is a bit like uni, though. You learn spells and stuff other witches and wizards don't, and it takes three years. Very difficult, of course. And getting in is half the battle."

She frowned. "And an Auror is—?"

"Oh, well—" He snorted. "Well, it's a bit like a spy. Being a sort of agent for the wizarding government. Hunting down dark wizards and that."

She laughed this time. "Are you actually telling me that you _will_ be going to spy school after all?"

He joined her in laughing. "Yeah, I reckon I will be, if I get enough N.E.W.T.s. Maybe that's why I thought of telling you that story before. Well, that and I'd been watching a lot of films about astronauts and NASA while you were out."

She tried to pretend to look stern. "Now, who told you that you could watch my television?" She couldn't maintain the façade, however, and laughed again, hitting him on the arm. "So, were you serious?"

"About what?" he said, putting the last dry plate away.

"About going to your house to get your things. _Actual_ magical things. Can I ask first—what _sort_ of things?"

He shrugged. "Well, I reckon it depends on what survived the attack." He gave a deep sigh. "I hope my broom's all right."

"Broom?"

"Yeah. I could have sworn I mentioned playing for my house team."

"Erm," she said slowly, "are you telling me that you play football on _broomsticks_?" She stared at him in disbelief. "How do you manage that, considering that you're supposed to kick the ball along the ground? Or do you fly very low? I should think the brooms would be very dangerous and injure people. Do your refs throw out a lot of players? Have you ever got a red card?"

He stared, not quite knowing where to begin. He settled for, "It's kind of complicated, but it's not football on broomsticks. Another game entirely, really."

She nodded. "Well, if it's not completely destroyed, I'd like to help you get your broomstick back. And—"

"—my spellbooks, parchment, quills, plus the ink that changes colour that I bought when I hadn't even started first year—and, let's see…" He leaned against the table, frowning. "There's my Sneak-O-Scope, Hedwig's cage, the Marauder's Map…"

He looked up; Tilda seemed quite lost. He tried to smile reassuringly at her. "It'll be fine. Perhaps we should make more than one trip for it all. I don't think the pair of us would fit under the Cloak if we were trying to carrying it all in my trunk."

Tilda nodded in agreement. "Why don't we take some backpacks I have, to stuff things in that aren't fragile."

"Oh, fragile! That's right; my Potions supplies need to come also, and my scales, my cauldron…"

She snorted, then covered her mouth with her hand. "You actually use a _cauldron_? Isn't that a bit of a cliché?"

She was sorry she'd said this when he looked hurt. "What else are you going to use to make a Potion? At least I still have the same one I started with; my friend Neville has melted so many I think even he's lost count of which one he's on now. Must be at least twenty, and that's if he's only melted an average of four a year since first year; it _has_ to be more."

Tilda bristled. "That's not very nice to say."

Harry hurried to repair the impression she had of his opinion of Neville. "It's just that Neville's always had a hard time in Potions. The moment Snape walks into the dungeon, he's quaking in his boots. Which means that if he _does_ get into N.E.W.T.-level Potions, the poor bloke has two more years of Snape to get through."

"Snape?"

"The Potions Master. Oh, god, I didn't tell you about _Snape_ yet."

Tilda was subjected to a blow-by-blow description of every vile thing Snape had ever done or said as Harry's teacher. She stared at him in disbelief as the catalogue of offences went on and on.

"And he hasn't been _sacked_ yet?" she asked in disbelief. Harry shook his head.

"Not a chance. He's also in the Order. Used to be a Death Eater, but he turned spy before Voldemort tried to kill me. Dumbledore seems to trust him. Anyway, I wasn't trying to insult Neville. I think he's the best! I'd have him on my side in a fight any day," he added. "He was brilliant at the Ministry, and he—" Harry seemed to be choking on the words; "he took the Cruciatus Curse like—like his parents probably had done—"

Suddenly he looked as emotional as when he was talking about blaming himself for his godfather's death; he pulled out a chair and sat at the table, running his hands through his hair. "See, Neville was the other possible person to fulfil the prophecy," he said quietly. "He has the same birthday I do—that we do. And his parents were in the Order of the Phoenix, like mine, and had defied Voldemort three times—"

"The Order of the Phoenix?" she asked, also pulling out a chair to sit. "Is that what you meant by 'the Order'?"

"Yeah. Sorry I didn't explain that. Dumbledore's gang, sort of. A group for fighting dark wizards, but not under Ministry control."

She looked puzzled. "Like vigilantes?"

"No!" he said quickly. "But—well, maybe not always worrying about the law so much," he conceded, thinking about Mundungus and his shady cauldron deals. "Or people who are usually on the wrong side of the law, but not dark wizards exactly. Some petty criminals, for instance, plus some Aurors—Neville's parents were Aurors—and just ordinary people like my mum and dad and now Ron's mum and dad, plus his oldest brother—trying to do the right thing and fight dark wizards however they can."

She nodded and put her hand on his. "Of course your parents did the right thing, Harry."

He nodded. "That's why I told you they were agents who'd been betrayed. That's basically what happened. One of my parents' closest friends, Peter Pettigrew, who was also in the Order, told Voldemort where to find them, and when he came to try to kill me, he killed _them_ instead. And when he tried to kill me after that—he couldn't."

He tried to explain to her Dumbledore's theory for why this happened, and oddly enough, she nodded sagely and said it made sense. He wasn't so sure himself, but he went along with her on this.

"Anyway, Neville's parents were tortured by some Death Eaters—"

" _Who_? You said Snape was—was one of those."

"He was, before he came back to our side. Dark wizards. Voldemort's people. They tortured Neville's parents because they thought the Longbottoms knew where their _master_ had gone. And probably also because Neville was the other one who could have been in the prophecy. The torture went on too long." He sighed. "They live in St Mungo's now. That's the wizarding hospital."

She seemed interested in that, so then he had to explain St Mungo's to her, and the ward where the Longbottoms lived. That led to telling her about the encounter with Gilderoy Lockhart at St Mungo's, which soon had her laughing rather hard.

Oddly enough, Harry didn't feel like laughing. "Actually, I thought the poor bloke was pretty pathetic. He has no idea what's going on. Probably won't for a while, if ever."

"But didn't you tell me that he tried to put a memory charm on you? And your friend Ron? He would have left the pair of you, plus your friend's sister, down in those tunnels, good as dead. It's just as well he's the one who lost his memory. I'd rather he was in hospital and you alive than the other way round," she added, squeezing his hand.

But when he looked at her—it was too intense. She blinked and looked away, withdrawing her hand from his.

"We were going to get your stuff. Shouldn't we start?"

He nodded. "Yeah. You know, it'll be good to be outside again, even if I still have to wear the Cloak. At least I'll have some company." He grinned at her.

 _Oh, good Lord,_ she thought. _Why on earth did I agree to go with him?_

She nodded, sporting a vacuous smile meant to hide her feelings. _I shouldn't be having feelings,_ she reminded herself, looking at Harry's eyes again. She thought of the things he'd gone through. _Now, if Tom had one ounce of the integrity Harry had…_ No, Tom still wouldn't measure up. She turned toward the kitchen door, closing her eyes, trying to tame her unruly thoughts.

 _I'm comparing every man in my life to a sixteen-year-old boy. How pathetic is that?_

It was, however, an incredibly brave and selfless sixteen-year-old boy. It was Harry. And it was becoming increasingly difficult for her to _remember_ that he was sixteen. _But I must_ , she reminded herself. _Sixteen, sixteen, sixteen,_ she thought repeatedly. _Don't forget_!

"Go get your Cloak and I'll round up some bags," she said, not looking at him. He ran up the stairs while she collapsed on the couch, rubbing her temples with her fingers as she thought of sneaking over to Privet Drive with him, huddled close together beneath the Invisibility Cloak.

The headache she'd been expecting earlier had arrived with a vengeance.

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	11. Full House

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Eleven**

 **Full House**

 **#/#/#**

" _Slow down!_ " Harry hissed.

" _I'm trying! I'm not used to this—ow_!" Tilda groaned.

" _Sorry. I said slow down, not stand still. Did I get your heel_?"

Tilda grunted in pain. " _Erm, just a little,_ " she lied, still whispering.

They continued to inch along awkwardly under the Invisibility Cloak. Little Whinging seemed to have been specially created to promote The Joys of Suburban Living on this July day, with the summer sky perfectly cloudless and achingly blue above the neat identical houses, lush full trees and endless green lawns. When they'd stepped outside in the Cloak, Harry had been relieved to see neither Aurors nor members of the Order outside Mrs Figg's house. He was _especially_ glad not to see Moody. It was the first time Harry had been out-of-doors since he'd run off the night Aunt Marge had come to stay. Were it not for the fact that he and Tilda went together with the Invisibility Cloak like a dotty old woman, a bath full of water and a plugged-in radio he might have enjoyed himself.

When they finally arrived at number four, Privet Drive, feeling out-of-sorts and cross with each other, Harry was greatly relieved. It was _his_ Cloak and he was accustomed to manoeuvring in it, but she was the older person and a _teacher,_ and therefore accustomed to being in charge. Everything each of them said to the other seemed to be in an exasperated tone of voice and Harry was growing tired of this. Though he could tell that she was also tired of it, he had scant sympathy for her. _I bloody well know what I'm doing. When will she stop treating me like a child_? It seemed impossible to break out of the cycle of being cross with each other once it began.

When they reached the front door, Harry crouched and picked up a stone sitting in the flowerbed; it was really a plastic imitation stone with a slot in the bottom for hiding a key. Harry removed the key and carefully lifted the Cloak to unlock the door, taking care that no one should see what he was doing from the street. When the door was open he returned the key to its hiding place and shuffled inside, Tilda shuffling obediently beside him at last.

Once inside Harry gazed around in horror; he wondered what his Aunt Petunia would think when she saw the place. Her reaction to the lounge being blown up by the Weasleys was bad enough; he expected her to end up in hospital again upon seeing _this_.

Tilda started to remove the Cloak but something in Harry's gut told him this was a bad idea. " _Not yet,_ " he whispered, wrapping his hand around her wrist. " _Wait until we're upstairs._ "

She nodded and they made their awkward way up the stairs; Harry flinched when she put her arm around his waist so they were closer together under the Cloak. " _I won't fit next to you, otherwise,_ " she mumbled, her face very red. When they reached his room and closed the door she abruptly pulled her arm from around him and threw off the Cloak, taking deep breaths, leaning on his desk chair. Rather than being red, now she was chalk-white.

He frowned. "Are you all right?"

She shook her head. "Sorry. Should have said: I sometimes get a bit claustrophobic. Being under that—it started to make me feel more and more closed in—and then I get a bit irritable, I'm afraid."

He snorted, but stopped when he saw her face. Well _that_ explained a lot. He nodded, saying, "Yeah, try using it to carry a crate with an overgrown baby dragon up to the tallest tower of a castle."

"An overgrown baby dragon?" she said, picking up a book from his desk; it was barely held closed by a cracked leather belt. She started to unbuckle the belt, but Harry leapt to her side, snatching the book from her hands.

"What do you think you're _doing_? This is _The Monster Book of Monsters_! Do you _want_ to get your hand bitten off?" he demanded in an angry whisper.

She glared at him and Harry felt a jolt in the pit of his stomach for a moment before he reminded himself that this was one teacher who could no longer give him detention.

#/#/#

"Aren't we supposed to go to Swansea?" Bill said.

"We shall do that also. Later." Snape didn't look at him.

"You couldn't do _this_ by yourself?" Bill asked Snape, smirking.

Snape glared at him as the lift continued to rise. "I could have. But this way we can go straight to Swansea afterward, with no complications about meeting. And I find the woman to be quite—irksome."

Bill nodded. "Ah. Don't trust yourself not to curse her. You know, in your line of work, you really should consider learning to control yourself a bit better," he said amiably, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, grinning to himself as he virtually felt the anger rise off Snape in waves. _It's just too much fun getting him wound up,_ he thought, feeling just a little—but not nearly enough—shame about baiting him.

"Hmph. Have you met her?"

Bill shrugged carelessly. "No, but I've met plenty of Muggles."

Snape snorted. "She's one of a kind. And hasn't changed since she was a girl, either."

Bill turned to him in surprise, narrowing his eyes. "How did you know her when—"

"Eighth floor," Snape interrupted him calmly as the lift slowed to a stop. When the doors slid open, he strode out of the lift, not waiting for Bill, who suddenly felt at a distinct disadvantage, which he did not like. _How did Snape—?_

Bill knew an answer would not be forthcoming even if he did ask the question aloud, so he let Snape handle the nurses, as he could tell he hated doing so. Bill also wanted to look around a bit. Unlike Snape, Bill was not uneasy in a Muggle hospital but intensely curious, staring around at the busy people walking the corridors, at the patients being wheeled past, either reclining or sitting. Like his father, he enjoyed learning about how Muggles got by without magic, though he was also painfully aware of how foolishly enthusiastic his father sometimes appeared about his pet subject. In contrast, Bill made a concerted effort to be low-key about his interest.

After seeing an old man hobble past wheeling a shiny metal post bearing a bag of clear liquid that seemed to be entering his body through a flexible tube, Bill nudged Snape. " _Look at that_ ," he whispered. " _Clever, isn't it? Sending the potion right into the body like that._ "

" _It's not potion, you dunce. And keep your voice down,_ " Snape said, barely opening his mouth, keeping one eye on the nurse to whom he'd been talking; she was on the telephone, nodding and making noises of agreement.

" _I am keeping it down. No one heard me. How soon will she be ready_?"

" _You_ again!" a sharp voice cried, making Snape and Bill spin around.

Petunia Dursley sat in a wheelchair as though it were a throne. She looked Bill up and down distastefully, her mouth twisting. "And you've brought either a criminal or someone from a rock band with you _because_ —?"

The young nurse pushing Petunia's chair smiled at Bill appreciatively. As pretty as she was, Bill forced himself to focus on Mrs Dursley instead. _She's not as pretty as Fleur, though._

"How do you do, Mrs Dursley? I'm Bill Weasley," he said, extending his hand, which she took very reluctantly, releasing it as quickly as possible. "My youngest brother, Ron, is your Harry's best mate." He gave her his most ingratiating smile, which had never failed to charm women of any age. There was, however, a first time for everything.

"Hmph! He's not 'my Harry.' Never was and never will be, thank heavens." She glared at Bill with icy hostility. "Don't just stand there! I've been waiting for you for the better part of an hour! This wheelchair isn't going to push itself to the lifts! I want to go to my house and tell you _exactly_ what's to be done with it!"

Within a minute of meeting Petunia Dursley, Bill Weasley had a very, very strong urge to suggest that they use the stairs instead of the lift; he thought her wheelchair would look quite nice tumbling down flight after flight with her in it…

He shook himself, coming out of his reverie. "Yes, Mrs Dursley," he said, with a great show of self-control. "That is why we are here. You can tell us exactly what you want done with your house."

As he pushed her wheelchair to the lifts, Snape smirking beside him, Bill thought, _You're just lucky I'm not the one telling YOU what you can do with your bloody house, you old cow, as you probably wouldn't like it one bit._

#/#/#

Tilda pulled her hands back quickly, as though the book were on fire. She turned to Harry with her fists on her hips. "I don't care for the tone you've taken with me since we left my house."

"What are you going to do?" he said snidely, putting the book back on the desk and going to a trunk in the corner. "Give me detention? Trust me—you can't outdo Umbridge for punishments."

"Of course I'm not—ooh!" she said in frustration. "I _know_ I'm not your teacher anymore. It would be nice, however, if you didn't act like you were _my_ teacher now. I know you must think I'm the stupidest person on the planet, but—"

"It's not that," he said, failing to contradict her, which she noticed. "It's just—I _know_ about this, okay? I've been sneaking around under the Cloak since I was eleven. I was able to take a bleeding _bus_ to New Stokington without anyone being the wiser."

"Except the dark wizards who attacked your house while you were gone," she interjected, crossing her arms. At the guilty expression on his face she immediately felt a pang of guilt herself. "I'm sorry, Harry. I didn't mean—"

"Yeah, well you should. You're right, after all." His voice was hard as he took in the damage to the room; there was a large hole in the ceiling over his bed; the hole was singed at the edges and seemed to go clear through to the roof. Birds had clearly been flying in and defecating on his sheets. "All this—it's my fault, isn't it?"

She clamped her mouth shut, not trusting herself to respond. Clearing her throat as she looked around, she decided to change the subject. "All right, we've got two backpacks and four carrier bags. Anything that doesn't fit into those will just have to wait."

Harry was cradling something in his arms that he'd removed from the trunk, something that clearly would _not_ fit into a backpack or carrier bag. It seemed, nominally, to be a broom, but it was unlike any broom she'd ever seen. She realised that it was designed to be more aerodynamic than a typical broom for floor-sweeping, and her suspicions were confirmed when Harry gazed up at her, his eyes misty, and said, " _My Firebolt_ ," in the voice she knew men reserved for truly beloved cars. He might as well have said, " _My baby._ "

"We can't take that," she said quickly, knowing that he would object.

"We can! It'll fit under the Cloak with us without a problem."

"And if you're carrying that, how are you going to carry more than one other bag?"

He shrugged. "I can put two in one hand."

Tilda opened her mouth to protest, but the expression on his face would brook no argument; he would take the broom come hell or high water. She sighed, opening the desk drawers, putting parchment, ink and quills into a carrier bag.

When they had stuffed the bags nearly to the breaking point, Harry wandered into the hall again. Tilda didn't know what he was about but followed him to his aunt and uncle's bedroom. He opened the door and gasped; half of the room was just _gone_ , and the other half was blackened with soot, smelling both damp and burnt. A large tarpaulin covered the gaping hole where the other half of the room should have been. He backed away quickly and slammed the door, shaking visibly. She put her hand on his arm.

She whispered, "Harry, don't—"

He shook her off. "Why not? I should see what I've done, shouldn't I?" he said in a low, angry voice. But she knew it wasn't directed at her; it was directed at himself. He strode back to his own room at first before turning abruptly and opening another bedroom door. He disappeared into the room and a moment later she heard what sounded like a pillow being hit very hard, repeatedly. Running to the doorway, she found Harry in what could only be Dudley's room, given that its decor was Early Overindulgence (or perhaps "Gluttony Revival").

Harry was hitting a punch-bag very fast, his face screwed up in rage, grunting with the effort. She couldn't tell whether the moisture on his face was tears or perspiration. Longing to tell him to stop, she instead stood silently, watching him hit it over and over. When he finally tired and collapsed on the edge of Dudley's bed she dared walk into the room, sitting beside him. Smirking at the sight of the slightly messy but otherwise unharmed-looking room, she remarked dryly, "Well, isn't Dudley just the deprived little boy?"

He shrugged. "I never wanted any of that," Harry whispered. "Well, maybe a little," he admitted, "but mostly I wanted my parents."

Then she _looked_ at the punch-bag, seeing the crude cartoon of Harry drawn on it. She thought of the expression he'd had on his face when hitting it repeatedly. "Oh, Harry! Did you—"

"Let's go," he said abruptly, standing and leaving the room, as though she hadn't spoken. She followed mutely, but when they reached his room, an appalling noise met their ears.

Someone had opened the front door.

#/#/#

Ginny leaned against the drawing room door and looked dolefully at the twins.

"You know how he is, Ginny. Snape can handle himself," Fred said, trying to reassure her, smiling valiantly.

"Yeah, he'll be back torturing all of you in no time," George said brightly. "Perhaps, if you ask nicely, he'll even double your summer homework," he added with a grin, before putting his hand across his brow melodramatically. "Ah, our long-lost—"

"You were in school, too, up until recently!" Ginny said crossly.

"—glorious school days," George finished. "How we _don't_ miss them."

The twins grinned at each other, obviously very pleased with themselves for having dispensed with the rest of their formal education. Ginny sighed, wishing she'd just completed her fifth year rather than her fourth, so she might also leave school. Other things seemed so much more _important_ now than learning about goblin rebellions and staring at the sky through telescopes. She'd learned more in the D.A. during the previous year than in any of her assigned lessons. _But no_ , she thought, her stomach clenching, _I still need to take my bloody O.W.L.s._

She jumped suddenly as a shout of triumph and one of anguish went up simultaneously from inside the drawing room. Still trying to calm herself, she stopped Fred from opening the door by leaning against it again. "Don't bother. It just means that Ron and Hermione are having another row. You know how they've been lately—snog, row, snog, row."

George made a face. "Poor Ron. I think he needs a little more snogging and a little less rowing," he added with a smirk, putting his elbow in Fred's ribs.

Ginny cried out as the door behind her back suddenly disappeared, having been pulled open violently by Ron. She stumbled, then righted herself, prepared to see her brother storming out of the drawing room, having had yet another disagreement with Hermione. Instead he was waving a parchment with an official-looking seal on it, doing a jig, and jumping so high he was in danger of cracking his head on the door's lintel.

"They came! _Theycametheycametheycame_!" he screamed, waving the parchment some more.

 _Ah,_ thought Ginny, _speaking of O.W.L.s…_

" _Blood traitors! Vile Mudblood scum, sullying the Noble House of Black!_ " Mrs Black screeched upon hearing Ron's voice.

"So," Fred asked his younger brother with a perfectly straight face, raising his voice only slightly to allow for Mrs Black's diatribe but otherwise ignoring her. "Didn't do very well on your exams, did you? Whatever will we do with you, Ickle Ronnikins?"

Ron laughed and pulled Ginny to him in a painful hug, kissing her soundly on the cheek as Mrs Black continued to spout invective against the intruders in her house. "I won't let you get me wound up this time, Fred. I'm too bloody happy. _You_ were never made a prefect, and _you_ never got bloody _ten_ O.W.L.s!" he cried, shoving the parchment at his brother and grabbing Ginny's hands, twirling her in a circle that was very quickly making her dizzy.

"Stop, Ron!" she said, tugging her hands away from his. She felt like laughing and spewing at the same time, plus Mrs Black was making her head feel like it would explode. "That's brilliant. Can I see?"

Ron snatched the parchment from the twins, who'd been staring at it with open mouths. "Thought I'd take it to Mum, so she could decide what my reward will be _this_ time."

Fred's mouth twisted; he looked quite dangerous when he was like this, Ginny thought. " _I think he needs taking down a peg or two, don't you?_ " he whispered to George, who nodded and said one word in response:

" _Percy_."

Ginny sighed, following the three of them, but at a distance. _If they're going to treat him the way they treated Percy, there's going to be trouble. Maybe if the twins had treated him a little better he wouldn't have turned on the whole family. I don't want that to be Ron as well._

However, as Ron passed Mrs Black's noisy portrait, he parted the curtains hiding her, grinned broadly and declared, "I don't bloody care how much you bellow, you old harpy! I got ten O.W.L.s!" And with that, he kissed her squarely on her painted mouth, grinning like the devil before dancing along the corridor to the basement stairs. Fred and George watched in amazement, then burst into uproarious laughter, patting him on the back, giving Ginny hope that they might go easy on him after all.

Mrs Black stared open-mouthed after him, no longer making a sound, and Ginny couldn't help saying to her as she passed, "Well, now we know how to shut you up, don't we?" She grinned wickedly at the appalled portrait.

When she reached the kitchen, her mother was holding the parchment and reading it with a glowing face, after which she pulled Ron into a hug. "That's wonderful, Ron!"

Behind her, Fred was hugging George in an exaggerated imitation of his mother, mouthing the words, _That's wonderful, Ron!_ along with her, but accompanied by additional histrionic gestures, round eyes and an open mouth. George was doing an extreme version of Ron, his chest puffed out, as proud as if he'd scaled Everest, achieved world peace single-handedly and been elected Minister for Magic. Ginny wanted to scowl at them, but it was very hard to think about this when she was having difficulty not laughing at their pantomime.

"Oh, I know it's not _twelve,_ " Mrs Weasley said, harking back to Bill and Percy, "but it's nothing to sneeze at, either." She had that bragging tone in her voice Ginny hated; in the past it had usually been reserved for Bill, Charlie or Percy, as though she was at a garden party, trying to impress strangers. Now it would be the voice she also used to discuss Ron. She thought longingly for a moment of joining the twins in whatever they had planned for Ron's comeuppance.

"Well, read it out," Mrs Weasley said, sitting at the table and urging Ron to sit beside her. "A pity your father went to work already! We'll have to Floo him at the office."

Ron cleared his throat. "All right, I'll start with the fairly insignificant ones first," he said in a pompous voice that made Ginny want to hex him. "An 'A' for Care of Magical Creatures. An 'A' for Herbology. An 'A' for History of Magic…"

Ginny wanted to choke with rage. _The only reason you scraped a pass in History was because Hermione helped you with your revision,_ she thought.

"An 'A' for Charms—practical exam. An 'E' on the written exam. Another 'A' for the practical exam in Transfiguration and another 'E' on the written. An 'E' for both the written and practical exams in Defence Against the Dark Arts…"

 _And that,_ Ginny thought, _was because of the D.A. and what Harry taught you._ Somehow this didn't irritate her the way Hermione helping him with History of Magic did.

Ron paused, looking up and grinning. "And an 'O' for Potions! _Outstanding!_ That means I can apply to be an Auror if I get a N.E.W.T. in Potions!"

Unable to resist puncturing his happiness, especially as she felt she had no chance of getting anywhere near so many O.W.L.s in a year's time, Ginny said sweetly, "What happened? Nothing in Divination?"

"Er, well—" Ron stammered, glancing furtively at his mother.

"Oh, _that's_ right," Ginny said, as though her memory had just been restored. "Didn't you tell the examiner that you saw an ugly man with a wart on his nose when you were gazing in the crystal ball? And why was that again?"

"It was because it was the git's reflection!" George crowed, doubling over in laughter. Mrs Weasley glared at him, then turned a gimlet eye on Ginny while speaking to Ron.

"Don't you listen to them, dear. Though I'm surprised you didn't get Astronomy."

Ron grimaced. "I probably should have done. I'm not interested in going back to St Mungo's with more broken bones, though, so I'd really appreciate if you didn't bring that up when Hermione—"

" _MUDBLOOD SCUM! DIRTY, VILE—_ "

"Not again," Mrs Weasley sighed as the screeching travelled down to the kitchen.

"I think you need to go give Mrs Black some more snogging, Ronnikins," Fred told him.

Mrs Weasley stared at him. " _What_?"

" _OH, SHUT UP, YOU IDIOT WOMAN! YOU'RE JUST A BLOODY PAINTING!_ " a familiar voice carried down the stairs.

"Oh dear," Ron whispered. Ginny frowned at him in confusion.

" _It's a travesty!_ " Hermione cried, entering the room, waving her parchment in the air. Her wild hair was even wilder than usual and she was clearly incensed. Ginny had forgotten all about Hermione, who hadn't emerged from the drawing room at the same time as Ron.

Mrs Weasley could tell that Hermione was not happy, but she smiled in an effort to calm her and said, "So! Hermione, dear, how many O.W.L.s did you get?"

"Only _twelve_!" she wailed, throwing herself into a chair by the fire, looking very much like she wanted to throw the parchment _into_ the fire.

Mrs Weasley beamed at her. "Twelve! Wonderful! Bill and Percy each got twelve."

"I said _only_ twelve! I was taking an extra subject! I should have had thirteen! There is _something_ very very _very_ wrong here!" she insisted, her voice going up and her eyes wild. Crookshanks had been about to jump onto her lap, but glanced up at his mistress and thought better of it, slinking away furtively. Ginny swallowed.

"Well, Hermione, I really don't think you should be upset about getting _twelve_ O.W.L.s," Mrs Weasley started to say reasonably. "We should have a party!" she declared, putting her arm around Ron. "A celebration!" She eyed Ginny. "And you never know, perhaps soon we shall learn whether we have another prefect in the family."

Ginny grimaced. _I bloody hope we don't_ , she thought.

" _Astronomy!_ Hermione screeched, as though Mrs Weasley hadn't spoken. Ginny fought the urge to put her head in her hands; she thought she might prefer the sound of Mrs Black's voice to Hermione's at this moment.

"What's that, Hermione dear?" Mrs Weasley said, also in her own little world.

"I didn't get Astronomy! And neither did Ron. I could believe that _he_ forgot too much to get a pass—"

"Oh, really?" Ron shot back hotly. "I revised my fingers to the bone, when I wasn't busy winning the _Quidditch Cup_ for _Gryffindor_." Ginny stifled her laughter.

"—but _I_ should have had an 'Outstanding' for Astronomy!" Hermione insisted, ignoring him. "And instead I didn't even get a pass!"

Mrs Weasley nodded. "You know, I seem to remember hearing that you all were in the Astronomy tower, taking your exam, when they were hounding Hagrid out of the grounds and Minerva—Professor McGonagall—went to his aid. I wonder whether, in the confusion, some exam papers were lost."

Hermione stood angrily, pacing before the fire. "Well, they'd bloody well better be _found_!" she exclaimed, striding toward the door. Ginny was both surprised at Hermione for what she'd said and surprised that her mother didn't chastise Hermione for her use of 'bloody.' Then again, given Hermione's stormy expression, her mother probably realised that this wasn't the time to give warnings about 'language' to someone who wasn't her own child. Hermione's anger was reminding Ginny of one of the twins' unpredictable fireworks: you never knew when it would explode in a different direction, change colours or multiply.

"I already sent Hedwig off with a letter to my parents, so can I use Pig to write to the Ministry, Ron?" she shouted at him suddenly. He nodded, looking rather frightened of her. "Thank you!" she said loudly, and was heard a moment later stomping up the stairs.

They all looked at each other in relief, now that Hurricane Hermione had passed. Mrs Weasley started talking excitedly to Ron again about the celebration, but the twins had very mischievous looks on their faces as they left the room, deep in conversation. Ginny followed, watching them shrewdly, and when she stopped them in the front hall and looked at them expectantly, they turned and glared.

"Go away, Ginny," Fred said tersely.

"Yeah," George agreed. "We're busy."

She crossed her arms. "Busy, are you? She _is_ my best friend. If anyone is going to have a part in taking her down a peg or two, shouldn't it be me?" Ginny raised her eyebrows, and after a moment, the twins burst out laughing. Fred patted her on the back.

"A lass after me own heart," he said cockily, doing a dead-on imitation of Moody.

"So, what did you have in mind?" Ginny whispered. "Sending her an official-looking letter telling her that a mistake was made, she actually got _fewer_ O.W.L.s?"

Fred laughed. "Oh, that's much better than what I was thinking. You're good, Gin. I'll see if I can find my old letter; we can make a copy of it and alter it just a bit..."

As she followed the twins up the stairs, she felt a sudden pang, wondering how Harry had done on his exams, whether he would be able to study N.E.W.T.-level Potions as she knew he wanted to, in order to apply for Auror training. But she froze as a horrible thought occurred to her.

"Wait!"

They turned and shrugged. "What?"

"Harry!"

"Uh, you seem to have me confused with someone else, Ginny," George said innocently. "Harry has darker hair and wears glasses. Has this scar thing on his forehead, although _I've_ always thought he'd be rid of it if he just had a proper wash…"

"Yeah, different person altogether," Fred chimed in. "Let me do the introductions—"

"Oh, shut up, the pair of you! It's just—Harry's O.W.L. letter. Will it still go to him wherever he is? Will it give away his hiding place?"

The twins looked at each other in horror.

" _Bloody hell,_ " Fred shouted, racing back down the stairs, George and Ginny scrambling after him as Mrs Black, hearing the noise, raised her voice again in protest.

#/#/#

Harry motioned for Tilda to return to the bedroom and pantomimed that she was to stay there. He put on the Invisibility Cloak, his heart pounding painfully, and crept into the hall, peering over the rail at the front door. He just stopped himself from gasping when he saw Snape, Bill Weasley and his aunt enter. His aunt walked with the help of a cane. He wanted to heave a sigh of relief but settled for whistling silently. _She's all right,_ he thought, the guilt about what he'd done making his chest feel tight. _I never meant to—_

"All right," she said imperiously, as only Petunia Dursley could, "let's start with the hall. First, a new chandelier. Second simply _must_ be a new carpet, and one on the stairs as well—are you writing this down?" She looked expectantly at Bill and Snape.

 _What on earth is going on?_ Harry wondered. He wished his aunt weren't present. If it had been just Bill and Snape he could have turned himself in (it was especially comforting to see Bill), but if his aunt still thought he'd attacked the house himself, he could find himself in a complicated situation. And then there would be explaining Tilda and how she came to be sitting in his bedroom surrounded by bags containing his wizarding things.

"I have just the thing," Bill said quickly, pulling a piece of parchment and a Quick-Quotes Quill out of what appeared to be a dragon-skin jacket. With his ponytail and single bone earring Bill was still the epitome of cool as far as Harry was concerned; it was clear, however, that Petunia Dursley thought that proximity to him might result in her contracting a dreadful disease; she cringed from him whenever he stood too close to her.

"Now, there's also the cupboard under the stairs. It was never really properly cleaned when Harry stopped using it. We locked up his school things in there a few years ago, but—"

Bill blinked, as though he didn't quite believe what he'd heard. "What do you mean _when Harry stopped using it_? Surely you don't mean—this wasn't his _bedroom_?"

Petunia looked at him as though he was unspeakably thick. "Why are you so surprised? I thought you knew all about it! That first letter he got—it was addressed to him in his cupboard. You lot were _obviously_ watching the house," she snapped, her eyes flashing. "And then when we moved him up to Dudley's second bedroom—"

"Wait," Bill said, holding his hand up with the quill in it. "Are you—are you _telling_ me that you didn't move him into a _bedroom_ until he'd got his Hogwarts letter? That until then he was sleeping in this ruddy _cupboard_?" He flung open the cupboard door. Harry knew what he would find there: his old flat mattress, a tatty blanket, a lot of cobwebs, and marks Harry had made on the wall when he was being confined for several days on end as punishment for doing something he didn't think he'd done, or at least, something he'd done but didn't understand how. (Such as turning his teacher's wig blue or making his own hair grow back after a haircut.)

Harry had never seen Bill angry; he was forcibly reminded both of Ron and Mr Weasley, especially when Mr Weasley had tried to get the Dursleys to bid him goodbye before he'd gone off with them to the Quidditch World Cup.

Petunia Dursley suddenly looked very small to Harry as she cowered before Bill's fury. It was difficult to tell what Snape's expression meant; he was surveying Aunt Petunia through narrowed eyes, as though working out a puzzle. Fortunately, she seemed to be adequately distracting him so that he was unaware of Harry watching the three of them from under his Cloak.

"You don't understand! Once we put the cot in the cupboard, we couldn't hear him anymore! We finally had some peace at night, except when Dudley needed us—"

"Are you telling me that you put him in there when he was still a _baby_?" Bill roared. Snape put his hand on Bill's arm.

"Weasley—let us remember why we are here," he warned in a low voice, though it seemed that the warning might also be for Petunia Dursley's benefit.

Unfortunately, they hadn't closed the front door completely and an unexpected visitor pushed it open and strode into the front hall as though she had every right to do so.

Harry groaned inwardly. _Aunt Marge._ She wore a neck brace that, for the first time in Harry's memory, gave her the appearance of _having_ a neck. She was obviously highly annoyed. "I stopped by the hotel to speak to Vernon, Petunia, and he said you were out here. And _who_ , pray tell, is _this_?" she said, eyeing Snape and Bill with equal distaste. The feeling was clearly mutual as soon as Snape and Bill laid eyes on her.

"Erm," Petunia Dursley stalled; "our architect and carpenter. We are discussing repairs to the house."

Marge Dursley sniffed disdainfully. "Shouldn't you leave that to Vernon? He's had a little to do with _manual labourers_ ," she said, assessing Bill's clean hands suspiciously. "That drill factory of his and all. I must say, though, you don't _look_ like you do much work with your hands," she told Bill, reaching out and holding up one of his freckled hands for inspection. Bill snatched it back.

"I'm, erm, a _master_ carpenter. I'm the boss; my men do the work."

"Hm," she said, continuing to look at him appraisingly. "In that case, don't you think you'd project a greater air of authority and respectability if you got a proper haircut? To say _nothing_ of _your_ hair," she said, her mouth twisting as she regarded Snape. "You're not one of those celebrity architects, are you? Have you designed anything I'd know?"

Snape appeared to be counting to ten—or a hundred—in his head. "No, madam. I doubt that I have," he said dryly.

Harry crept back to his room, closing the door quietly. He took off the cloak and sighed. "This may take a while," he said to Tilda, feeling rather hopeless.

"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea?" she suggested tentatively. Harry snorted.

" _Maybe_?"

#/#/#

The day was half gone when Snape, Bill, Aunt Petunia and Aunt Marge finally departed from number four, Privet Drive. They hadn't bothered coming into Harry's room, to his relief. Just in case, he and Tilda had been standing in a far corner the entire time, the Cloak hiding them, while his belongings, in the backpacks and carrier bags, were stashed in his trunk again. He could tell that Tilda was growing more and more distressed from being under the Cloak; he tried to help her with her claustrophobia by suggesting that she close her eyes and picture wide open spaces, but that seemed to make her shake even worse and huddle closer to him.

He found it a strange experience, standing with a woman under his Invisibility Cloak for hours, his arms around her waist and her head on his shoulder while they waited for the sound of the footsteps leaving the house. He hadn't had the opportunity to think about what it was like being under the Cloak with her while they were walking from her house; now he had quite a long time to think about what it felt like having her body pressed against his, her breath close to his neck, her arm around his waist.

What it felt like was _torture_.

Fortunately, Marge didn't stay long. After she'd taken a brief tour of the disaster that was the ground floor of the Dursley home and offered a lot of unsolicited advice about what _she'd_ do if it were _her_ house, she left. When she was gone, Bill started to put his parchment away and said, "Well, that's it, then."

However, Petunia Dursley informed him that she had no intention of doing a single thing Marge had suggested; she proceeded to spend an interminable amount of time cataloguing every bit of work _she_ wanted them to do on the house instead.

Standing under the Cloak with Tilda, Harry forgot to breathe a couple of times as he wondered whether he was sweating too much, or his breath was sour, or his palms damp. It was entirely too nerve-wracking to just _stand_ under the Cloak, minutes stretching into hours, when Tilda was so distressed about the enclosed space. He wanted to comfort her somehow, but he felt as inept as when Cho was crying on him after their kiss under the mistletoe. He had no idea how to do this sort of thing with charm and grace, how _not_ to seem like an utter prat. Once he patted her on the back and muttered, "There, there," when he could tell she was in distress, but he didn't repeat this when he heard how stupid he sounded.

Snape, Bill and Aunt Petunia finally left and he felt like his heart started again. Tilda, however, thought it prudent to wait for about half an hour before moving from their hiding place, which surprised and impressed him; he could tell that she was practically climbing out of her skin. When the half hour was up, however, she quickly threw off the Cloak, pulled the backpack she was going to wear out of his trunk, collected two of the carrier bags, and started to march out of his room.

"Tilda! You'll be seen leaving the house!"

She stopped short, then sighed. "All right, all right, I'll get back under there for a little bit. But I want us to duck behind that high privet near the corner so I can get out from under the Cloak and walk home in the open. It'll be easier to get back into my house, anyway. If someone happened to be passing by it'd look awfully queer for the door to open and close by itself. This way it'll just be like I've gone out and come home."

He agreed and when they'd extricated her from the Cloak, the look of relief on her face made his heart clench; being in enclosed spaces very obviously terrified her to the core. Yet she had stood there with him while first Marge and then Petunia had passed judgment on what should be done with number four, Privet Drive. Hiding in his room had turned out to be the safest thing; he doubted its treatment would be anything other than an afterthought. He'd been right, luckily, and didn't have to worry about Snape being in the same room with him and detecting his presence.

Harry thought he'd never been so relieved in his life when he and Tilda were in her house once more, putting down the carrier bags, backpacks and Harry's Firebolt. He collapsed on the stairs and closed his eyes wearily.

"Harry! Wake up! It's only lunchtime," she laughed, fully recovered now that she'd been walking in the fresh air again. She looked reborn and happy, and he had to smile at her.

"I know. But that was the most exhausting morning I think I've ever spent _not_ in History of Magic. And at least in _there_ I can catch up on my sleep."

She laughed. "So, falling asleep during the exam was just your way of being consistent? After years of sleeping through that subject, why stop now?"

Harry flushed. "I'm just happy to be done with it. Ruddy stupid goblin rebellions…"

She laughed, and Harry smiled at her, glad to see her happy again, though another part of him had also not entirely minded being pressed against her for a long time. It was not without its charms, he had to admit. Which was why it was also torture.

Tilda made sandwiches. As they ate, Harry could tell that she wanted to ask him something; she looked like she was screwing up her courage to broach a touchy subject.

"Harry," she finally began tentatively; Harry braced himself, wondering what it was going to be this time. "Why didn't you ever tell me—or anyone—that they were keeping you in a cupboard _under the stairs_?" Her voice disappeared in a horror-stricken whisper. He wondered whether part of her horror was due to her fear of enclosed spaces, a fear he had never had the luxury of developing.

He shrugged. "I was embarrassed. Still am, if it comes to that," he added, feeling his face grow warm. "And I didn't think anyone would believe me, anyway. You still teach at the primary school; you know how Old Soberley is. Do you think _she_ would have believed me?"

Tilda drew her lips into a line. "No, I reckon you're probably right. About her, anyway. But I would have liked to know! There are—there are things that could have been done. The police could have taken you out of the house."

"And put me where? In a foster home? An orphanage?"

She sighed. "Someplace without _Dursleys_ , at any rate," she spat, as though their name was the foulest language. Harry shook his head.

"Last summer, my uncle tried to kick me out, and as soon as he said I had to go, all hell broke loose. Dumbledore sent a Howler to my aunt, something about an agreement."

"Sent a _what_?"

Harry explained Howlers to her and soon had her laughing at his description of the one Ron had received from his mother after flying the old Ford Anglia to school, but she sobered again when Harry told her about the ancient magic that had protected him for years, the spell that required him to make his home where his mother's blood was.

"If someone tried to take me away from Aunt Petunia, I reckon Dumbledore could have just stepped in and made sure no one in the Muggle government remembered any reason why I couldn't go on living with the Dursleys. It's possible, though, that Dumbledore might have also mentioned something to Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon about the cupboard, if he'd known about it. It doesn't really matter now, does it? It never occurred to me to say anything."

She put her hand over his. "You never learned to trust adults, did you? I know how that can be. For years, when dad was in prison, my mum kept telling us, 'And when Daddy comes home, it'll be just like it was before.' She failed to mention that she was planning to leave him, that it wouldn't be _anything_ like it was before.

"And then when it was just me and Dad and Jack, Dad tended to be a bit, well, _scattered_. Forgot to pay for the electricity. Or to go to the shops for food. Or we wouldn't even _have_ electricity for a time, while he worked on the house we'd just bought, so we couldn't keep food fresh in a fridge and had to make sure we went to the shops every day—which he forgot about as often as he remembered." She sighed. "In some ways I think he never grew up, you know? Went from living with his mum to my mum. And from there into prison, where I reckon one of the trade-offs of not having your freedom is not having to pay your rent and electric and worry about where your food's coming from. And then when he got out, suddenly Mum wasn't around anymore to cook for him and clean up after him and call his attention to the little details he always let slip through his fingers. I'm amazed he got through prison all right."

She was still holding Harry's hand, and he squeezed it, looking at her closely. Her eyes seemed very large and reflective at this moment; he could see his own bespectacled face mirrored in the large, dark pupils. After a dumbfounded moment he realised that _she was looking back_. They pulled their hands away simultaneously, abruptly standing and bustling around too haphazardly, cleaning up the lunch dishes.

During the afternoon they worked on cleaning out one of the junk rooms again, getting it about two-thirds done by the time they were hungry enough for dinner. However, while Tilda drove off for some takeaway Chinese (they'd tired of curry), he continued working. It still wouldn't be ready for him to use that night (he reckoned he could go back to the couch), but perhaps after their birthday they could finish it, he hoped. It would be nice to sleep in a bed again.

He didn't fancy leaving things under the bed; they'd found some examples of taxidermy that her dad had bought, which made his skin crawl. (He was half-afraid that Mr Harrison might have got his hands on some wizarding artefacts and he didn't want to be around if the stuffed hedgehog started _talking_ to him.) Harry definitely didn't want to risk anything like that being in the room when he was ready to sleep in it. He reached under the bed, his hand coming into contact with a heavy burlap bag, which he dragged into the light with quite a bit of effort. He examined the bag for a moment before opening it, with a great deal of difficulty, and peering in, thinking, _Please, no taxidermy, no taxidermy…_

He saw only blackness, so he took a chance and thrust his hand into the bag, pulling out a heavy piece of metal that turned out to be an elaborate fork, very dark in colour. He polished part of the handle with the edge of his shirt, but this had very little effect. Reaching into the bag for more, he realised that it was simply full of the stuff, knives, forks, spoons, in the same elaborate pattern.

As he continued to examine the fork, he spotted something; after his attempt at cleaning a mark on the back had become somewhat clearer, though the fork was still a long way from being a sparkling silver colour. On the back of the fork's handle was an R entwined with an N. Something about this seemed familiar to Harry, but he couldn't be certain what it was.

The front door slammed and Tilda called up the stairs, "Are you still working? Come out of that bloody room. I got chopsticks, so we can drop food down our fronts for the next half hour. Come on, it'll be fun. And no ruddy knives and forks to clean."

 _Clean._ Suddenly it was like a light had gone on in Harry's brain. The fork wasn't just a dirty silver- _colour_. It was tarnished _silver_. A special cleaner was needed for it; he'd seen his aunt cleaning her good silver (which she wouldn't let him near), but it was never as darkly tarnished as this.

Now he realised what the entwined 'N' and 'R' on the silver fork meant: _Northrop-Reese_. It was the missing silver Tilda's dad was supposed to have stolen, the silver that was never found.

It was the reason that Jim Harrison had gone to prison.

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	12. A New Cruciatus

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 **Replay**

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 **Chapter Twelve**

 **A New Cruciatus**

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When Harry reached the kitchen, Tilda was dishing up the food. Delicious aromas crept into his nose and made him think that just _before_ dinner might not be the best time to confront her about the silver (if there _was_ a good time). She seemed to notice, however, that he was exceptionally quiet while they ate; she kept trying to bring up new topics of conversation, as though searching for something that would produce a response other than, "Mm hm," or, "No, I didn't know that."

At length he said, "Your dad was kind of strange, but you stood by him anyway."

She stared at him. "Well, that came out of the blue. Yeah, of course I did. He was my dad. What else was I supposed to do?" She frowned. "What made you think of that?"

He bit his lip, trying to come up with something that didn't include the silver. To accuse someone's dead father of being a criminal was not something he was eager to do. He remembered vividly what Aunt Marge had been saying about his own father after he'd spoken of Sirius being a murderer. He remembered the times Snape had told him how arrogant his father was and how horrified he'd been when he'd gone into the Pensieve and seen the young James Potter for himself. He didn't imagine that learning the truth about her father would be pleasant for Tilda, assuming that she didn't already know.

He tried to shrug nonchalantly as an idea took shape in his mind. "This last year, I found out something about my dad. He didn't go to prison or anything, but—do you remember Snape, what I told you about him?"

"The one who was at your house this morning? Goodness, his voice carries. He sounded just like you described him."

Harry nodded. "Right. Well, he'd always told me what a berk my dad was when they were in school, how arrogant and full of himself he was, that sort of thing. And I never believed him. Hagrid always talked about my dad like he was, well, perfect. My dad saved Snape's life once, too. I thought Snape was being really petty to still hate him, and to hate me for being his son. But then—"

"What?"

He told her about the Occlumency lessons, which he hadn't done before, making her clutch the edge of the table with white hands. "Can he—can Voldemort _see_ you here, in my house?"

Harry hesitated for a moment, suddenly terrified. _If Tilda is hurt because of me…_ But he remembered Dumbledore's protection spell and the lack of pain from his scar. He shook his head. "I don't think he's tried. I'd feel him if he did. He seems to be up to something else. I could tell he was really happy recently, the morning you found me in the lounge. But I think I may have scared him off when he tried to possess me at the Ministry. That doesn't mean he might not try again, of course."

He explained that Snape had been putting some of his own memories in a Pensieve before the private lessons, but then he had to explain Pensieves to her. After that he told her what he saw when he went into Snape's memories: the young bully, James Potter. She looked grim but otherwise expressionless while he spoke. "And—and I just couldn't work out why my mum married him. I mean—I'd be complimenting him if I called him a prat, but that's not a strong enough word…"

Tilda pushed rice around on her plate with a chopstick, reminding Harry that the silver was upstairs beneath the bed. (Luckily, the silver showed no signs of beating like a very noisy heart, loud enough to be heard in the kitchen.) Nodding, she said, "I know just how you feel, Harry. Yeah, my dad was framed, like your godfather. But he _volunteered_ the information about the aliens. When I was young I defended him, said my dad never told a lie. As I grew older, it became harder _not_ to question his story."

"Well, to be fair," Harry said, "he probably witnessed magic and an Obliviator from the Ministry must have done a sloppy job with his memory charm. You said he saw a green light? That could have been the Killing Curse—which was how my mum and dad died—or he could have seen someone firing the Dark Mark into the sky." This necessitated an explanation of the Dark Mark, but he was finally able to say, "Did you ever—well, did you ever doubt his _other_ stories when you were older? Since you started to doubt his alien stories?" He swallowed, watching her face as she cleared the plates from the table.

"How do you mean?" She furrowed her brow.

"Did you—did you ever wonder whether he was really framed?" he finally asked, a nervous croak in his voice. He swallowed and waited for her to betray a knowledge of the silver or grow cross with him for questioning her dad's word.

She sat down again, staring into space. "You have no idea, Harry. Sometimes I _wished_ with all my heart that he _wasn't_ framed."

He frowned. "Why?"

Giving him a half-smile, she said, "So he wouldn't have gone to prison for nothing. In my mind I gave him a defence that still made it all right, of course. It was to help support our family, all that. But sometimes the hardest part of remembering him being in prison was thinking of it being for _nothing_ , because he was a good man who told the _truth_ about what he'd seen, so he was considered to be the biggest liar in eight counties. _And_ therefore no one trusted anything he said in his defence."

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his resolve fading. He couldn't tell her. She _said_ she had _almost_ wished he'd really done it, not actually wished it. He couldn't do that to her.

 _Why?_ another part of his brain demanded. But as he gazed at her, his stomach did several flops that told him why. He caught his breath, realising what had happened.

 _I've fallen in love with Tilda._

He tried to swallow, his mouth suddenly completely dry.

 _I love Tilda._

He couldn't topple her father from his pedestal. It would destroy her. Even though she might be receptive to the truth if she convinced herself he had a really _good_ reason for doing it, he saw that, above all, she still revered her father's willingness to sacrifice himself for his family and for the truth. It was impossible to cavalierly destroy that image; Harry didn't want to be Snape. He had no reason to convince her of Jim Harrison's guilt. Perhaps when he eventually left her house he could find a way to take the silver with him and get someone in the Order to return it. (For a moment he thought of Mundungus Fletcher, but then he realised that Dung might try to sell the stuff himself; Remus would probably be a better choice, if he avoided touching it.)

"Sorry about what? Are you all right, Harry?" she asked, peering into his face, concerned.

"I mean—I'm sorry on behalf of—of wizardkind," he said awkwardly. "When you think about it, it's our fault your dad was called a liar. It wasn't his fault at all." He swallowed and looked down, afraid that if he stared at her for much longer she'd guess his new secret, assuming that she hadn't already, even before _he_ had.

 _I'm in love with Tilda._

She smiled and started to put her hand over his, but seemed to think better of it and sat back, crossing her arms. "But it's not _your_ fault. You weren't even born. And the people who tried to fix it so he wouldn't remember—I'm sure the slip-up wasn't intentional. My mum leaving my dad _was_ intentional," she added bitterly.

"But your dad going to prison is _why_ they split up! And—and everything else you went through. How can you not be upset?" Suddenly this was more important than the silver.

She shrugged. "It's in the past. And as I said, intent is important. I've tried, over the years, to have faith that things will sort themselves out. Things will probably even work out, eventually, between me and my mum. That sort of faith was required quite a lot when I was a girl and we were working on derelict houses, trying to go fast enough to prevent them falling down around our ears," she laughed.

Harry suddenly remembered something she'd said earlier: " _Being a trusting person doesn't make you mentally deficient_. You said that."

She smiled at him, bemused. "What made you think of that?"

He gazed at her, at her large, light eyes and blonde hair. The resemblance was only superficial, as he'd never thought Luna pretty but thought Tilda was beautiful. However, on the inside… "You remind me of someone I met this last year."

"A schoolmate?"

"Sort of. She's in the year below me. I met her through Ron's sister, Ginny, who's in the same year. Her name's Luna, but a lot of people—well, a lot of people call her Loony Lovegood. Because her head's a bit in the clouds," he explained, feeling somewhat ashamed, as though he were gossiping.

Tilda laughed. "I remind you of a girl whose head is in the clouds? Should I take that as a compliment?" She was still smiling and he didn't think that she was taking it as an insult.

"I didn't mean that that was what made me think of—I mean, it's something else. A few something elses, actually. She doesn't have a brother, but it's just her and her dad now. Her mum died. And her dad runs this rag called _The Quibbler_. Well, most people think it's a rag. Full of mad stuff about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks and other rubbish…"

"Oooh," she said, comprehension dawning. "A wizard tabloid. How funny!"

He made a face. "And because the _Daily Prophet_ was dedicated to making me look like a liar every chance they got, the only paper that would print the truth of what happened to me—that Voldemort was back—was _The Quibbler_. Which probably made it look more than ever like I was spouting rubbish. At least to some people. Others understood that for once _The Quibbler_ was publishing the truth."

Tilda frowned at him. "Being a bit judgmental about this 'rag,' aren't you?"

He looked sheepish. "Sorry. It's hard to—well, Luna _always_ says the stories in _The Quibbler_ are true. The madder they sound the more she defends them."

Tilda stood and carried the leftover Chinese food to the fridge silently; when she'd closed the fridge door again she leaned on it, looking thoughtful.

"Did it ever occur to you that whether she really believes what she's saying, for her own sanity, she _has_ to say it and pretend to believe it? He's all she has in the world, right?" Harry nodded. "Well, then. I felt the same about my dad's stories."

Harry looked up at her, his throat tight; in the evening sunshine she looked more beautiful than ever and he felt his heart turn over. Tilda smiled warmly at him, meeting his gaze.

"I was reminded of Luna for another reason. On the last night of the term, we always have a big feast. I was so miserable over Sirius that I didn't want to go. I ran into someone else who hadn't gone to the feast, either. Luna." He told Tilda about Luna hanging up the notices to get her belongings back, her simple faith that it would work out.

Tilda nodded again. "I admit, this girl does sound like a kindred spirit. And tell me, Harry, do you think that someone who _wasn't_ as trusting as Luna would have kept you in her house for almost a fortnight?" She raised her eyebrows and he felt ashamed again for thinking that she was stupid.

"No," he admitted, "probably not."

#/#/#

Tilda surveyed Harry thoughtfully, remembering that he hadn't contradicted her when she had said that he thought she was stupid. She had felt painfully naïve many times in her life, but with her pupils she had usually been able to determine when lies were being told. Most eight- and ten-year-olds were not adept at lying, so it wasn't much of a strain for her to see through the flimsy excuses and tales of homework-hungry pets. She also hadn't _wanted_ to trust most of them, which she thought probably made a difference. She'd taken to Harry from the first odd thing he'd done at school, _wanting_ to believe whatever he told her. She remembered why now: it was because the odd things he'd done made her think that maybe, just maybe, her dad wasn't barmy after all. Maybe there _were_ aliens in the world, and Harry was one of them. She hardly thought she should be considered stupid for thinking that was the explanation, rather than _magic_.

"And do you think Luna is stupid?"

She saw Harry hesitate. "Well, she _is_ in Ravenclaw, which is the house for the brainy kids. And it was her idea to fly the Thestrals to the Ministry. She also helped get my interview published in her dad's paper…"

Tilda smiled. "I don't think this girl is stupid or mad. She's loyal and loving to her father, doesn't have a meltdown when people treat her shabbily, trusts in the goodness of the universe to return her belongings to her, recognises when someone needs help to get the truth out, and found a good solution for you in a sticky situation." For a moment she faltered, suddenly feeling irrationally jealous of this girl she didn't even know. _Don't be an idiot_ , she tried to tell herself. _It would be nice for Harry to get to know this girl better. They might get on if he abandons some of his prejudices about her._

"So, do you want to ask me anything else about being stupid or trusting? From the horse's mouth, you might say?" she laughed as she placed the rest of the dishes carelessly into the sink, trying to sound cheerful but hoping he would allow her to change the subject. Somehow the topic of her willingness to believe in things, whether she should or not, was not something she wanted to continue to explore. "Because I don't feel like washing dishes—I want to start celebrating our birthday early. Let's put on some music and just dance like fools!"

Harry followed her into the lounge, looking uncertain. She glanced at his face as she turned on the radio and searched for a station with the sort of music she wanted. It was hard for her to tell whether he thought she was having mood swings or just considered her to be as mad as he evidently thought Luna was, but was doing a bad job of hiding it.

She finally found what she was wanted—music from the sixties and seventies, a driving dance beat, and she started moving with her eyes closed. One thing she _did_ like about clubs was the dancing, but she could rarely hear music she liked at one these days, and there was the added problem of the men in the clubs always assuming that if a woman got up to dance she was doing it to put on a show, to lure a man to her side. Once or twice she'd said to a nosy man who'd approached her, "Did I _look_ like I was trying to get you to come to me? Can't I just like to dance?"

He'd promptly said, "No," before stalking off. Pip had asked her why she'd agreed to come to the club if she was going to send every man packing in under a minute, and Tilda had felt her explanation of simply enjoying dancing would again fall on deaf ears.

She opened her eyes as the first song segued into another with a similar beat, seeing that Harry had gamely decided to dance as well. Or try. Unfortunately, it was very, very clear that he had no experience with this. He jerked around in the most awkward fashion she'd ever seen and she had to bite her tongue very hard to keep from laughing. But soon, as he took his arm flailing and head bobbing to new levels, she could no longer maintain her self-control and burst out laughing loudly, unable to keep dancing herself.

Harry stopped, looking hurt, and she tried unsuccessfully to stop laughing, holding her middle with her arms and clamping her mouth shut. It didn't work. Harry threw himself into a chair with a sulky look on his face, but Tilda, relenting, went to him, laughter still bubbling up inside of her as she held out her hands to him.

"I'm sorry, Harry. I should have realised. Come on, give it another go," she urged him. He took her hands and stood; where they touched it felt to her like a small electric current was connecting them and she had to fight the natural urge to immediately drop his hands. Instead she nodded at him, dancing again herself, and he began to move jerkily once more.

After watching him do this for several more painful minutes and yet another song, she couldn't hold her laughter in. The song to which they'd just been dancing ended and over the sound of the announcer's voice, she gasped, "I—I—I'm sorry Harry!" She could barely speak for her laughter.

He crossed his arms. "I don't see what's wrong," he said defensively. "And you said, 'I should have realised.' Realised what?"

"That you're—well—you're so—so _English_!" she gasped as she continued laughing.

He also laughed. "What did you expect me to be—Moroccan? You're English as well!"

"Yes, but I've learned to dance like I'm _not_. And no," she said, laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes, "I did not expect you to be Moroccan. Do they dance well in Morocco? Anyway, it's just that—when you dance—you're so _very_ English. You've never done this before, have you?"

He grimaced, his arms hanging awkwardly. "Well, we had a Yule Ball at school in my fourth year and I had to go with a partner and start off the dancing, as one of the Triwizard champions. But Parvati just steered me around the floor—"

"Ah. She decided to lead."

"Right. Later there was some faster music and people were dancing sort of like you were just now, but I only danced that first one because I had to."

"Oh, your poor girlfriend!" Tilda said, feeling a pang for the abandoned Parvati. "Wasn't she pretty? Didn't you like her?"

"Pretty? Well, yeah. One of the prettiest girls in school, I reckon. But—well, she wasn't the first person I asked, and she wasn't my girlfriend."

Comprehension dawned on her. "Ooh. She wasn't the girl you _fancied_. I take it _that_ girl turned you down?"

He sighed. "She'd already accepted someone else."

"New song," she said as the announcer stopped talking. It was just a little slower than the previous selections, and she said, "Here, watch what I'm doing with my feet." Harry tried to watch and imitate what she was doing, also duplicating what she was doing with her arms. "That's—well, better, anyway. So, you didn't get to go with the girl of your dreams and you spent the whole night watching her with her date, did you?"

"How did you know?" he gasped.

She shrugged. "Lucky guess. You don't strike me as the type to let go that easily."

He sighed as he continued to imitate what she was doing; she winced as he miscalculated and banged into a table. He swore under his breath and she struggled to keep a straight face. She could tell that he hadn't meant to tell her, but soon the whole painful saga of the dead boyfriend, the mistletoe, the disastrous Valentine's date and his ex-girlfriend being asked out by his friend's ex-boyfriend had all come tumbling out. In the meantime, he wasn't being as self-conscious about his dancing and had improved greatly. He only banged into the table twice more in five songs.

"So, Cho wasn't right to suspect something between you and your friend?" she asked, wondering whether he'd tell her if Cho _had_ been right.

But he looked horrified. "No, no! Hermione's like—well, not really a sister, but—well—like an extremely strict headmistress who sometimes also likes sneaking about and breaking the rules. She gave me a shouting homework planner for Christmas. And she has some brilliant—and sometimes mad—ideas. But she's, well, she's _Hermione._ And besides, I think Ron fancies her."

"Ah. So even if you fancied her as well, you'd back off?"

Harry looked like he was thinking about that. "I reckon. But I don't, so it's not a problem anyway."

She nodded and then felt irritated with herself. _Why should I care if he fancies this Hermione?_ But somehow it was good to know that he didn't.

#/#/#

Harry looked down in amazement. _I'm dancing_. And he wasn't making an utter fool of himself. Anymore. As soon as he thought this, the music changed. A slow ballad washed the room in sound, in violins and harps, while background singers hummed and a man with a low, mellow voice sang about the woman he loved. Tilda looked up at him and it seemed inevitable that they should move closer together, until her arms were around his neck and her head on his shoulder. He tentatively put his hands on her back, holding her against him, acutely aware that her entire body was pressed to his, something that was making all his senses stand to attention, both anxious and hesitant, just like when they'd been hiding in his room on Privet Drive. They didn't talk about it, just did it.

When he'd danced with Parvati at the Yule Ball there had been enough space between the two of them to drive a lorry. And even when he'd kissed Cho Chang under the mistletoe in the Room of Requirement, the only place where their bodies had touched were their lips, until she was sobbing on him and he was comforting her, which was not how he had wanted that moment to go. When their mouths had been in contact he had been too paralysed with fear to reach out and hold her to him, too afraid that he would wake and discover that he'd dreamt it. (He _wished_ that he had dreamt more of Cho, but unfortunately, during his fifth year his true dreams were rare because of Voldemort.)

Until Tilda, he'd never held a girl's body against him exactly like this, and he'd certainly never swayed to pulsing music that seemed to have entered his bloodstream, changing the rhythm of his circulation, his breath. He closed his eyes and pressed her to him, relishing her warmth, not caring that it was already a hot night and this was making him feel hotter. He _wanted_ to feel hotter, he wanted to burn up like Fawkes, to give himself over to the feelings he'd so feared in his room on Privet Drive, the feelings she was producing in him just by dancing _this close_ , her body moulding to his, her hands soft on the back of his neck, which suddenly seemed to have ten times the normal number of nerve endings.

He felt her breath on his neck, the regular inhalation and exhalation, very softly, as though she'd fallen asleep on his shoulder; he turned his head slightly to look down at her, seeing first the pink shell of her ear, very close to his mouth. He let out a breath that sounded very loud to him; he might have been holding it, but he didn't remember making a decision to do so. She shivered when the hot air blew across her ear and he stifled a moan in his throat, for she had brushed against him in a way no one else ever had, at least not when he was in this state. (He'd managed to carefully avoid this sort of contact when they'd been under the Cloak.) Certain that she would back up from him, appalled, he turned his head farther, so he could see more than her ear.

She gazed up at him for a moment, her cheek still on his shoulder. Then the luminous eyes came closer and she looked, it seemed, at his mouth. They continued dancing and Harry didn't know how much time had passed; he was starting to feel like she had been staring at his mouth forever. He couldn't see the expression in her eyes, but he thought she might be on the verge of making a decision. His heart was ready to leap out of his chest and he finally decided that he couldn't let it be like it was with Cho, letting her make all the decisions and all the moves.

It had been so odd, as though he was watching someone else under the mistletoe with the girl he'd fancied for two years, someone else standing there like a stone while she pressed her lips to his. And then, when he'd finally decided to be less passive, to see what would happen if he opened his mouth a tiny bit, she'd started crying, ducking her head, and then he was patting her back awkwardly while she sobbed about Cedric. The moment for him to do something had passed. How could he initiate a kiss after that, in her grief? He'd told Ron and Hermione the truth; if it was up to him he _wouldn't_ have done anything, because he would never have imagined in a million years that he _could_ do that and not have the girl back up in horror, laugh at him, or respond violently.

And then, shock of shocks, just before they left the Room of Requirement to return to their common rooms, she had quickly turned and, standing on her toes, brushed her lips against his again, this time opening her mouth slightly. He had responded in kind, getting only the briefest, most frustrating taste of her before she moved her mouth to the side and kissed his cheek, saying goodnight to him, tears still glistening on her eyelashes.

The second kiss had been the one to leave him shell-shocked, the reason that he appeared like a zombie when he returned to the Gryffindor common room. That was what he had originally been hoping would occur when he kissed Cho, only he would have preferred a more prolonged version. It was so quick he might have imagined it. He hadn't really wanted to discuss the incident with Ron and Hermione, but Hermione had rather forced him to, and then Ron had made him smile in spite of himself because of his exultant reaction.

Harry looked at Tilda's lowered eyelids, at her nose and lips, and thought about what he wanted to do. Somehow he knew that she was different from Cho, and while she was yet staring at his mouth and hovering on the edge of a decision, he decided to make it for her.

#/#/#

 _I'm kissing Harry._

He had surprised her, moving his head forward suddenly by a mere two inches so that his lips were in contact with hers; even more surprising was that he was gently opening his mouth, his warm tongue touching her lips in a light, tentative question. She exhaled in a kind of giddy relief, letting him feel her own tongue, breathing with his breath. She twined his hair in her fingers desperately, trying to deepen the kiss still more, trying to reconcile something in the Harry she could feel with her lips and tongue and hands and body with the boy she had known, but he seemed to be gone and this new Harry was in his place.

She was already aware of the fact that he was aroused, but she hadn't thought about that the first time she realised it, as she rather assumed that that was the constant state of teenage boys. But now, kissing him deeply and feeling his arms spasm across her back, hearing the small moans in his throat, she felt excited to know that he was responding to _her_ , excited to know what she did to him. While they were still kissing, she backed up from him only enough to get her hands between them, to work at the buttons of his shirt. He froze for a second, perhaps with surprise, before starting to help her.

She'd never felt this way before, feverish with want and yet also overwhelmed with emotion. She couldn't remember a single time in the previous ten years when she had slept with a man out of anything other than a feeling of obligation. It had been different when she was twenty-one—and then she had learned that he was married, that he was never going to leave his brilliant, beautiful wife, and that he had only pretended—everything.

Harry could not be further from that. She could not get over the feeling that, even before she had started on his shirt, he had laid his soul bare, exposing himself utterly. Once he'd told her the unvarnished truth about being a wizard, there was no artifice in Harry, at least not for her, and her chest hitched as she thought of his faith in her, his simple trust that she wouldn't steer him wrong. He trusted her even though he was still amazed that she trusted _him._ He had told her his deepest, darkest secrets and she had told him hers. As she slid his shirt off his shoulders he exposed himself again:

" _Oh, Tilda_ ," he breathed against her mouth; " _I love you so much._ "

She tried to say something but he was kissing her again and she was overwhelmed by his passion. She held his face between her hands, then slowly slid her fingers down his sharp cheekbones and jaw as they kissed, caressing him like the precious thing he was to her, moving down to his smooth chest, which was as soft and unused as a baby's.

The thought made her pull back and stare at that chest, at the flat, pink nipples, the white, hairless skin, translucent and unblemished. _He's a child_. She continued to stare, as though he no longer had a head, as though he only existed from the neck down. _This is wrong; he's not a man, he's a child. You can't do this._

She raised her eyes to Harry, who was frowning, confused. Her mouth worked soundlessly for a minute before she managed to choke out, "I'm sorry, Harry."

Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes as his face screwed up in a plaintive, forlorn expression that intensified the impression of his being a child. "Sorry? I—I don't understand." Tilda backed up so that they were no longer touching and she tried not to notice that he was still aroused. _Don't look,_ she scolded herself. _Be the adult._

"I'm sorry I let—I let this happen-"

" _You_ let!" he said, growing angry. Then he changed it to, "You _let_? I thought—both of us—" He seemed unable to put his thoughts into words, a clear frustration on his face that didn't seem solely physical.

"Yes," she said softly. "I'm sorry Harry," she said again, for a different reason; "I didn't mean that we weren't both—that it wasn't mutual. I'm putting this badly," she whispered, floundering about, trying to work out how to say what she meant, pacing and wringing her hands. Harry's face clouded over; she had to admit, he looked far more like a man than a child now—above the neck. But she couldn't help looking at his chest again, the evidence of how young he was. He appeared to be even younger than many other sixteen-year-olds she'd seen, and she thought of him in a cupboard under the stairs for ten years, eating the meagre helpings of food the Dursleys allotted him. _Damn you, Vernon Dursley,_ she thought, suddenly wanting to take Harry in her arms and comfort him like a mother far more than she wanted to take him in her arms like a lover.

Tilda swallowed, looking at Harry's face again, seeing his distress; she shook her head sadly, the maternal instinct winning. "We can't do this, Harry. It—it isn't right."

#/#/#

Harry stared at her in disbelief. He should have _known_ , when she was undressing him, what it was leading to. A part of him _did_ know, but most of his brain was still in denial, still not assuming that would happen. He'd never assumed with Cho. They'd barely kissed. And she was young; he just assumed that she _wasn't_ interested in that. _But what if she and Cedric already did that?_ he thought for the first time. She did manipulate him so they were alone in the Room of Requirement…

He looked at Tilda. Of _course_ she'd assume that intense snogging and removal of clothes would lead to shagging. To sex. She was a woman, not a girl. She was experienced, she knew what she was doing. He frowned, not liking these thoughts, not wanting to think of her with other men. Though he'd been unable to prevent his mind from repeatedly conjuring up the image of her exposed body, he had never seriously entertained the thought of sleeping with her, and could have been perfectly happy with just kissing her. Could still be happy with just that.

"But I love you," he said helplessly, unable to stop himself. _Damn_! _Why'd I say that again?_ "And—and you asked me about those other girls, like you were jealous—"

" _Oh,_ " she whispered. "You noticed that. Damn."

She _was_ jealous! "—and you kissed _me_ , and were taking my clothes off," he added, hating his cracking voice, the way it made him sound so young.

She shook her head. "I know, it was wrong of me. I need to be the adult and—"

"Adult!" he cried. She looked shocked by his anger. "What am I?"

She swallowed. "A child, Harry. You are a child." _Yes, keep saying that,_ he thought, _and maybe you'll start to believe it._ He remembered the feel of her hands on him, her lips; she hadn't been treating him like a child.

"I'm not a child!" he roared, the very childlike frustration he felt making him even angrier, but mostly at himself. "I'm sixteen! Or as good as!"

"You might as well be _six_ ," she argued. "If—if we _did_ do this—"

He grasped her by the shoulders and spoke in a low, fierce voice very close to her mouth. " _I am not a child._ "

He lowered his mouth to hers again.

#/#/#

It seemed a very un-Harry-like thing to do, and she wondered for a terrifying moment whether Voldemort was possessing him; however, she remembered his telling her that his love for Sirius had caused Voldemort to flee from his mind. Very likely the love he felt for her would make his mind an intolerable place for Voldemort again. This was all him, even the physical aggression, in which she did not think he would usually engage. She opened her mouth after a second, responding again, drinking him in, pulling him to her. She could feel his surprise; he clearly hadn't expected to win the argument so easily, yet here she was succumbing to him. He need never know that that wasn't the case.

But even as he held her to him, even as he shivered from the sensual slide of her tongue against his, she knew somehow that he could tell that something about it was different; as she pulled gently away from him she knew that he'd worked out what it was.

" _That was for pity,_ " he whispered. "A goodbye kiss. Nothing has changed."

She nodded. "No, nothing has changed," she said softly, her heart aching.

The ballad on the radio sounded smarmy and false now, the overdone violins hackneyed and trite. The romantic music seemed to be mocking them.

She drew a deep breath, feeling like she was about to dive into a very, very deep pool. _I have to do this. I owe it to him. He should know. He told me._ She'd only just come to realise it herself, to realise _why_ it mattered to her whether he fancied his friend, whether he still thought of his ex-girlfriend, whether he fancied the girl at the ball…

"I love you too, Harry," she finally admitted, standing apart from him. "I don't deny it. And I want this. But I shouldn't. It's wrong. And—and I hope you don't hate me, but if I have to choose between a night with you and the rest of my life, I'm going to have to choose the rest of my life." Once she started, the torrent of words wouldn't stop. "If anyone ever found out—I would lose _everything._ My job. My home. I would be run out of the village. I don't know—perhaps I could even be arrested. My life would be over, the life I've known. I mean—who would let me teach their children? Who in their right mind would hire me? It doesn't matter that I wasn't messing about with you when you were ten; it wouldn't matter to anyone that we love each other."

She took a great shuddering breath, blinking tears out of her eyes. "It was wrong of me to get you all worked up. I'm very, very sorry, Harry. You can never know how much. If it's any comfort at all, please understand that I don't _want_ to stop, that I'm as frustrated as you. But _one_ of us has to be strong. When all is said and done, I have the most to lose. I hope you don't think me selfish, but—that's how it is. No one could approve of the two of us, you know that. They would blame _me_ , only me. They wouldn't consider you capable of deciding to do this of your own accord, as wrong as they would be. The world sees you as the child and me as the adult. Anything that happened between us would be _my fault._ "

#/#/#

Tilda was crying freely, and with every word, Harry knew she was slipping away—and that this was also right. _She_ _was right._ That was the way of the world. He'd been railing for a year against being considered a child, and he was still considered to be a child by the world at large. It was going to keep them apart, it _had_ to keep them apart, or he could ruin her life. He couldn't bear to think of that happening. And yet—maybe there was another way.

"Well, we don't have to—I mean, I'm not even convinced I'm—I'm ready for—" he stammered, unable to say it aloud: _sex_. The thought of it, moments ago, had seemed exciting, but as he thought about it in cold blood, about being expected to know what he was doing, about—everything involved—a panic started to seize him, only ebbing when he remembered that she'd said they couldn't do it. He was actually relieved, but didn't know whether she would appreciate knowing this.

"What would you have us do, Harry? Sit on the couch and snog like—like _teenagers_?" she said archly, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow.

He swallowed, feeling very, _very_ young suddenly, too young for more than following her around like a puppy and calling her Miss Harrison. "You make it sound like—like something stupid," he rasped. "Just because—because—it doesn't mean that we _have_ to—I mean, how could anyone find out about—"

She sighed deeply, looking like she wanted to reach out and touch him. "I know. And I trust you, Harry. I know that you wouldn't let things get out of control—the way I did," she said softly, nodding. "But you're young, and it's harder for you to want something you've never experienced. I know you think that you think about it all the time, like most boys your age, but you _can't_ , not really, not until you _know_ what it is you're thinking about. It's all still abstract for you. But I _know_ what I'm keeping myself from doing with you. I know and—and I _can't_ just kiss you, feel your arms around me, and not— _want_ there to be more. It's my failing and not yours, Harry, but it means—no. We can't kiss again. Not even a little."

"You said you love me," he whispered, suddenly realising this.

She shook her head. "How could I help it, Harry?" she said, smiling through her tears. He tried to smile back, but failed. "That still doesn't mean that we're going to—"

"I know," he said quickly, before she could _say_ it and frustrate him further. "It's just—just nice to know," he finished feebly, his heart beating very fast. He wasn't certain how he'd had the nerve to tell her first that he loved her, but now that she had said the same thing he didn't feel quite so stupid. It was something. _Tilda loves me._ "Well," he said smiling a little more successfully. "I won't be sixteen forever."

She laughed, making his heart turn over at how beautiful she looked. "That's true. But Harry—your first time—it shouldn't be with an old woman like me."

"Old woman!" he said, appalled, as though someone else had insulted her.

"It should be a girl near your age. You should be in love with her, and she with you."

He sat on the couch, running his fingers through his hair. "Easy for you to say. Everyone I know thinks I'm barmy or doomed. I'll probably be killed before I can finish school."

She shook her head. "No, you don't. Don't try to lay _that_ brand of guilt on _me_." Her voice shook as though she remembered what he was very likely facing once he left the safe cocoon of her home. "For one thing, I'm here to tell you now that you are _not_ going to let him beat you. You're better than that and you know it. For another—if we _did_ do this, do you know what you would think?" He raised his eyebrows at her and she felt a wave of heat move up her face. "Other than _that_. You would think, 'Well, now I'm not going to die a virgin, so it doesn't matter what happens to me.' _Wrong_. It matters. And when you put that great ponce in his place, I expect to get an owl from you _telling_ me that you did!" she exclaimed.

He smiled sheepishly, sitting back on the couch, while she dried her tears and smiled back at him. Going into a crouch, she looked up at him and patted his hands. "You're going to be fine, Harry. You have such inner strength and such purpose. You don't need me to tell you these things. You probably already _know_ them; you just need to _remember_ them. And trust me; you don't want your memories of your first time to include _me_. They should include someone far younger—and prettier."

"You're pretty!" he said quickly, making her smile and put her hand on his cheek.

"And you're sweet." She stood and bent to kiss him on the top of the head. After switching off the radio, she turned to face him once more. "Again—I'm sorry, Harry. We're both tired and need sleep. Or if you're not tired yet you can watch television. I'll get you a fresh sheet to put on the couch."

He shook his head. "No. I'm fine." She looked pointedly at his trousers and he grabbed a small cushion, putting it on his lap. He didn't appreciate her knowing smile.

"Yes, I'm sure you will be. Get some rest and we'll go to Brighton tomorrow." At the foot of the stairs, she turned and said, "Happy birthday, Harry."

He sighed as he turned to look at her, still clutching the cushion. "Happy birthday, Tilda."

#/#/#

The moment she entered her bedroom she collapsed in tears, leaning against the door and sinking onto her haunches, shaking silently, arms wrapped around her knees as sobs wracked her body. _How could I do that_? she demanded of herself. _What sort of person am I_? But she knew what sort of person. She was in love. Hopelessly and terribly in love. With someone who was strictly off-limits. And he loved her too, which made it worse. _If he was married…if he didn't love me back…if he was a famous politician…_ But he was none of those things, and she continued to sob into her knees, aching for him, a hollow, yawning feeling in her chest, as though one of the Dementors he'd told her about had sucked all the happiness from her.

At length, she dried her eyes and sighed deeply. She looked at her watch; it was almost half-eleven. He was probably asleep. She didn't know whether she'd be able to do the same. Brilliant birthday present, she thought. You love me Harry? Oh, that's grand, I love you, too. But we can't do anything about it, not even kissing, because I'm a dirty old woman who will attack you if you try even that.

She started to feel a choking sob come on again and forced herself to swallow it. Staggering into the bathroom, she knelt before the toilet, spewing her dinner into it, shivering as though fevered. Afterward she brushed her teeth mechanically before deciding that she was hot and sticky and wanted a nice cold shower. She could use a cold shower for other reasons, as well.

As the water sluiced over her it was very difficult not to think about him, to imagine he was there. But that brought her to her senses again as she remembered the way the sight of his chest had sobered her, brought home that he wasn't an adult, as much as he might seem to be, as much as she might wish it. It wouldn't be fair to steal this part of his childhood from him. That was some other girl's part, not hers. It _would_ be stealing.

That morning she'd hung the freshly washed man's shirt she liked to sleep in on the bathroom door; she put it on when she was done her shower, then flushed the toilet again to help clean the smell of vomit out of it before brushing her teeth once more. She finally turned out the light and returned to her bedroom, knowing that she very likely had a restless night of staring at the ceiling ahead of her.

#/#/#

Harry was jolted awake by heavy footsteps overhead. Tilda seemed to be _stomping_ to the head of the stairs, then back to her room. Did she start to change her mind—then change it back? After her explanation that she didn't trust herself not to escalate things if they started off merely kissing (and she _had_ been the one to take his shirt off, which still sat on the couch beside him) he was rather relieved that she'd stayed upstairs. On the other hand, the idea of sleeping in her bed with her— _just_ sleeping—was rather appealing. He'd liked watching her fall asleep and he imagined lying by her side and holding her tightly, the closeness, just that and nothing more.

He looked around in confusion. His glasses had been removed from his face and the television had been turned off. He'd tried to watch a number of programmes but had instead simply sat changing channels every few seconds, slouched on the couch until he'd dozed off. He wished he'd woken sooner, when she'd removed his glasses from his face. She would have been very close, and he could have—

 _No, you couldn't. Don't be stupid. You don't want to destroy her life._

He sighed. It was true. Giving in to this would be very dangerous for her. If he got up the nerve, among his peers _he'd_ be hailed as a hero (at least by the blokes), but she'd be considered a monster by the world. There was no point in dwelling on it. He had to let go of it all, even the thought of just kissing her or holding her while she slept. Staying in her house now seemed like a worse torture than the Cruciatus Curse. However, he _had_ been looking forward to the Brighton trip…

After their birthday, he would go. He'd sneak next door and turn himself in, even if there were Aurors there. He'd face the music. Dumbledore had told him to stay put, but he don't think Dumbledore had anticipated _this_ happening.

Suddenly a shrill scream cut the silence of the sweltering night.

 _Tilda!_ he thought, springing to his feet, leaping over the couch and bolting to the stairs. There was a brief break in the noise; then the shrill squeal started up again, and he thought he heard her make another noise, a strange pained grunt.

Suddenly, all was silent.

Almost.

He thought he heard her voice through the bedroom door in a hushed whisper. It was impossible to make out the words. Was she talking to herself? He remembered her saying she loved him, too. Perhaps it _would_ be worth the risk of being together, however briefly. They could be very careful to make sure no one found out.

He stood at the foot of the stairs, unsure of his course of action, before finally starting up. There was no other way to find out whether this was the right thing to do. He came out of his reverie when he reached her bedroom door and tentatively knocked. "Tilda? Are you all right? Why did you scream?" His voice shook. What would he do when she opened the door?

But she didn't. He heard her clear her throat and say, "I—I'm fine, Harry. Go back downstairs. I just stubbed my toe. I'm going to sleep. Good night."

Harry hesitated before saying, "Oh. Okay, then. Good—good night." He couldn't keep the disappointment out of his voice. Turning slowly, he walked back to the stairs and loped down them, his heart feeling even heavier than his feet.

He threw himself onto the couch again, sighing, before removing his glasses and putting them on the table. With his eyes closed all he could see in his mind was Tilda _not_ pulling back from him. Now that it was no longer a frightening possibility, the idea of having sex with her was more appealing, and thus very frustrating to think about, because it was never going to happen. His eyes snapped open again. He heard her get into bed. Groaning, he turned over and tried to blank his mind. _Think of it like an Occlumency exercise. Don't feel anything, wipe all emotions from your mind…_

He was never sure whether he actually achieved his goal of not feeling, but he eventually dozed off again, sleeping restlessly, awaking frequently from vivid dreams of Tilda, his entire body aching for her in a way he'd never known was possible. Perhaps he'd been wrong to assume he could have just kissed her and not wanted more; she was perceptive enough about herself to know that she couldn't tolerate that. But despite his physical frustration, the worst thing was his heart feeling like it would never work quite right again…

He always managed to get back to sleep, but he also always woke up again. At one point he heard the bedroom door slam, followed by the sound of the bathroom door, then the bedroom door. He wondered what she'd do if he went upstairs, if he knocked on her door again. Would she change her mind?

 _No no no. Her life, her future, gone. Because of you. Don't even think about it._

He sighed and closed his eyes again, waiting for sleep to overtake him once more. The next time he awoke his watch told him that it was just before seven o'clock. He stretched and yawned, staggering to his feet, making his way to the stairs, then backtracking to get his glasses. At the top of the stairs he remembered belatedly that Jack had fixed the downstairs loo. However, he was already upstairs and didn't think he could wait to go all the way back down, through the lounge and kitchen, down the corridor…

Instead he shuffled toward the bathroom. He was already here; no point to turning back. But just when he'd reached the bathroom door, the bedroom door suddenly swung open.

And everything went black.

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	13. Masquerade

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Thirteen**

 **Masquerade**

 **#/#/#**

Harry blinked rapidly. He was lying on the floor in the hall outside Tilda's bedroom, his tailbone aching as though he'd fallen hard onto his bum. He looked around in confusion; his head felt like it had been hit by a Bludger and then wrapped in too much gauze.

"What—what's going on?" He blinked some more. It didn't help.

Tilda started to kneel over him and then stood hastily, holding the neck of her dressing gown together with her hands. "I—I don't know. I heard a thud and I came running out. Is it your scar?" she asked with a shaking voice.

He stood slowly, wincing. "I don't think so. I don't remember much. I woke up and needed to use the loo—"

"Why didn't you use the one downstairs? Jack fixed it, remember?"

He stared at her stupidly, his mind feeling like it was an utter blank. "Right. Forgot. I'm so used to coming up here. But I don't even remember how I got up here, and the next thing I know I'm lying on the floor, my bum aches—"

She laughed; it sounded forced. "You're just sleepy. Go on, use this one; you're here already. I can wait. And then we'll work out what we want to take to Brighton."

He forgot everything else when she said _Brighton_. "We're still going?"

"Of course. Why not? It's our birthday. We deserve to celebrate."

Tilda's hair was on her shoulders this morning, making her look very young. Her cheeks were quite pink and her eyes looked brighter than usual. She still held the top of her dressing gown together at her throat. He slouched toward the bathroom, trying not to think about what had almost happened between the two of them the night before. "Yeah. Celebrate," he said dully before closing the door.

Once in the bathroom he stared into the mirror; for a moment it seemed that he looked very different— _older_. When he blinked again, the usual thin, pale face stared back at him, the black hair standing on one side of his head from the odd way he'd slept on the couch. He splashed stinging-cold water on his face to try to wake up. After he used the loo he returned to the sink to wash his hands and brush his teeth, but as he was rinsing his toothbrush, something caught his eye.

 _Seven-fifty_.

He stared at his watch. It couldn't have taken almost an hour to splash water on his face, use the loo and brush his teeth. He wished he'd checked his watch before entering the room. How long had he been out cold? How much time had he lost? He swallowed, remembering what Ginny had said when he'd asked her about being possessed:

 _Can you remember everything you've been doing? Are there big blank periods where you don't know what you've been up to?_ He frowned, staring into the mirror again, touching his scar tentatively, but it was flat and still, no discolouration, no throbbing, no nothing. _When he did it to me, I couldn't remember what I'd been doing for hours at a time. I'd find myself somewhere and not know how I got there._

He wasn't missing hours, but he _was_ feel like he was missing time. Somewhere between twenty and thirty minutes. There was simply no good, non-Voldemort-related reason for it to be so late. His chest felt tight as he contemplated what could happen if Voldemort possessed him while he was with Tilda. He could do something to endanger her. Voldemort could force him, Harry, to hurt or even kill her and he wouldn't know until afterward.

He swung open the door, his heart hammering in his chest. Tilda was nowhere to be seen. He pounded on her bedroom door impatiently. She did not answer, which panicked him. He raised his hand to strike the door again when she swung it open abruptly.

"So! My turn then?" she said brightly. _Too_ brightly, he thought.

"Erm, yeah," he said uncertainly. He'd been about to warn her that she might be in danger if he stayed with her. He was going to suggest that he turn himself in to the wizards next door, whether that meant the Order or the Ministry. But something about her stopped him. She watched him warily as she went into the bath and closed the door. Harry examined the door with narrowed eyes. Was _she_ watching _him_ for strange behaviour? How long had he been out of it? And what went on during that time?

Harry tried to swallow but a lump in his throat wouldn't let him. No. He wasn't going to leave. If she was actually still Tilda, she could be in danger. And if she wasn't…

He crept back down to the lounge, trying to formulate a plan for action. If she was no longer Tilda, if, during the lost time, Tilda had been replaced by a Death Eater, he needed to feign ignorance until he could make his move, try to find out what had happened to the real Tilda. But if she was a Death Eater, why not just kill him while he was out cold? Why wait for him to wake? He didn't have an answer to this. She was definitely behaving very strangely. And she looked odd and was wearing her hair differently. Perhaps she was still Tilda, but under the Imperius Curse? The question again being, of course, why that and not just killing him?

Suddenly, having more physical contact with Tilda Harrison was the last thing he wanted. He didn't know exactly what had happened or how it had happened, but somehow, whether she had been replaced or put under Imperius, she had become the enemy. However, Harry felt he had no choice but to pretend that nothing was wrong and go through the motions of preparing for the trip. He turned and looked up the stairs, his hand on his wand, the words of the man he'd thought was Mad-Eye Moody ringing through his brain:

 _CONSTANT VIGILANCE._

#/#/#

Albus Dumbledore stood at the open tower window, breathing in the morning air and admiring the cloudless summer sky. He tried to find these small moments of calm during the day and enjoy them, for the clear blue sky was in stark contrast to the metaphorical clouds gathering, clouds which grew darker and more ominous by the day.

He had too many people in too many precarious positions to feel completely at ease; at any moment news might come about one of them (as it had come about Sturgis Podmore and Arthur Weasley) being detected and put out of commission in some manner. It had been quite the balancing act to make Arthur's presence in the Department of Mysteries corridor seem utterly innocuous, and it had been enormously difficult to convince the Minister to release Sturgis so that he could continue in the fight against Voldemort. The poor fool had a worse criminal record than Mundungus and Cornelius was not convinced that he was the sort of person who could be trusted. Albus had finally prevailed and Arthur had also recovered, but in both cases, it had been very touch and go. And now…

He watched the wisp of what seemed to be a small white cloud whipping toward him; it was almost impossible to see, and were it not for the fact that there were no other streaks of white in the sky he very likely _wouldn't_ have seen it. It seemed to pick up speed once it was above the school grounds, and Albus braced himself for the impact. A misty, insubstantial white animal seemed to dive suddenly into his wrinkled old brow, head first, and almost immediately, the voice of the sender echoed around his cranium:

 _I have done as you asked me, sir,_ the deep but young voice began, without preamble. _And it is as you feared: the Department of Magical Examination has indeed sent Harry's O.W.L. results to him. The letter should have arrived yesterday morning. The reports you have received from the undercover Order members about this are not fabrications. He very likely knows exactly where Harry is and was probably only waiting to have the information confirmed. We should get Harry out of there as soon as possible. I recommend that as many members of the Order as you have at your disposal go to Arabella's house and lie in wait. I will try to learn more at my end._

The voice was gone. Albus pictured young Weasley sending it, remembering how proud his parents had been when he was named Head Boy. Albus hoped fervently that he was safe. He'd taken many risks and made some of the worst sacrifices of anyone in the Order.

Albus walked wearily to his desk and sat, laying his hands flat on the tooled leather surface. After giving some thought to his plan, he turned to Phineas Nigellus and said, "Phineas, I need you to go to Grimmauld Place. Tell Arthur and Molly Weasley to recall all members of the Order to Headquarters. I shall be there shortly."

With a disgruntled twist of his mouth, Phineas nodded and disappeared from his portrait frame. Albus sighed again. Fawkes was off on an errand, so he had little choice.

 _I hate travelling on Thestrals,_ he thought as he descended the spiral stairs outside his office. _So undignified at my age._

#/#/#

Ginny sighed as she held the Extendable Ears to the drawing room door. Once in a while she caught murmuring, but for the most part it was quiet and boring. Then she saw a beam of light out of the corner of her eye; someone had opened the kitchen door at the bottom of the stairs. The meeting was over. She quickly opened the drawing room door and ducked inside, not caring that she was violating Ron and Hermione's privacy. She didn't look at them but put the Extendable Ears to the drawing room door from the inside this time, hoping that those leaving the meeting would say something worth hearing.

She'd felt her heart leap into her throat when she'd seen the story in the filthy page from the _Times_ that Mundungus had carelessly tossed to her before he'd entered the kitchen. It still stank of greasy fried fish, but just as she was about to bin it, something had caught her eye:

 **Village Stricken by Epidemic of Catatonia  
Scientists Baffled; Water Testing to Begin**

 _Catatonia?_ It sounded like it had something to do with people being catatonic, and when she began to read through the dreadful grease stains she learned that she was right. Everyone in an east coast fishing village had suddenly gone "funny," according to the story. A delivery man driving a lorry to the local pub had been the first outsider to notice; when he tried to make his delivery, he'd discovered that the pub was locked up, and when he'd tried the newsagent's next door he discovered him sitting in front of his business, glassy-eyed, rocking back and forth, his arms around his knees.

The lorry driver found the barman around the back of the pub in the same position. The driver began to go from door to door, trying to find anyone who wasn't senseless, until he finally couldn't take the eeriness of the place and ran back to his lorry. While driving out of the village he said he felt a strange coldness slicing through him, as though he were being stabbed with shards of ice. The lorry driver was currently under observation. Scotland Yard had been called; the reporter hadn't gone to the village himself but talked to the investigators after they returned, all of them reporting the same strange attack of coldness that the lorry driver had experienced; one of them had tried to kill himself, full of despair.

Ginny shivered while she read the story, which was buried on a back page with another small story about an old department store in London, plus a lot of adverts with very tiny type. It was so familiar and so chilling. _It's started,_ she thought numbly. They knew that the Dementors had left Azkaban, and now they were working their way across the country. London didn't seem so terribly far from the coast; at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, they were probably safe, but what about the rest of London? What about the suburbs around the city?

She closed her eyes and tried to swallow, her mouth utterly dry, as she remembered the Dementor on the train when she was starting her second year…

 _Tom, why am I covered in blood and feathers? What's going on, Tom?_

 _A cold, cruel, careless laugh._

 _What's going on is destiny, little Ginny. And you are helping me to fulfil mine. Write the words on the wall and go to the girls' bathroom. Open the Chamber. He'll come for you, you know he shall. It is his nature. He shan't be able to resist playing the hero._

 _No! I shan't do it! And you're wrong about him! He doesn't play the hero, he—_

— _doesn't even know you exist? Well, that could be a problem. But since you are his best friend's sister, I think that might help him to remember._

 _No! No! Noooo!_

"Ginny!"

Ginny whirled around, sweat beading on her forehead. She tried to slow her breathing so she was no longer gasping. Smiling feebly at Ron and Hermione, who sat at opposite ends of the couch with books on their laps, she said, "The meeting's over. I'm hoping someone slips and says something actually informative when they're leaving."

"About Harry?" Hermione said, putting her book aside.

Ginny shook her head. "No, I was wondering whether they were going to say anything about the—the Dementors."

"Dementors!" Ron said, turning white beneath his freckles and letting his book drop to the floor.

Ginny took the article she'd saved from the _Times_ out of her pocket and handed it to him. Hermione hung over his arm, reading. When she'd finished she was as pale as Ron.

"How will the Order—or the Ministry—stop all of the guards that used to be at Azkaban from Kissing every Muggle in the country?" Ron said in awe.

" _I still can't believe those idiots at the Ministry. They were supposed to— Oh dear! Albus seems quite certain that it was seen._ "

"I mean," Ron went on, "even most wizards probably can't even cope with—"

" _Sssh_!" Ginny hushed Ron. " _Professor McGonagall was saying something_ ," she added in a whisper. Ron and Hermione joined her at the door; Hermione took one of the ears for herself, while Ron shared Ginny's.

" _You heard him, Minerva. It came from our most reliable source,_ " said Remus Lupin.

They all heard Professor McGonagall heave a world-weary sigh. " _Albus didn't say whether he is going._ "

" _Not in so many words. I think he's going to try to. The rest of us shall be there, though, standing by, ready to fight._ "

" _We should have got him out of there long before this._ "

A familiar grunt travelled up the Extendable Ears. " _He's there for a reason. We're going to have a hell of a time getting him out without being seen. A Disillusionment Charm won't be enough. But then, he and his friends managed to get from Hogwarts to the Ministry last month; perhaps one of them can give us a suggestion,_ " Moody said, and before the three of them knew what was happening, the drawing room door was opening.

Ginny, Ron and Hermione hastily hid the Extendable Ears behind them, looking sheepishly at their head-of-house and two former professors. _No,_ Ginny thought quickly; _only Professor Lupin actually taught us, the other Moody was a fraud._

Professor McGonagall's mouth had gone very, very thin; she looked disapprovingly at Ron and Hermione in particular, it seemed. "To think," she said imperiously, "that I should see the day when two of my own prefects take up spying on me."

"You want to get Harry out of—wherever he is, don't you?" Ginny said quickly.

Moody nodded. "No harm in you knowing. The Ministry—"

"Alastor!" McGonagall scolded him; she shivered visibly when he turned his magical eye on her.

"The little girl worked it out," he said. "The twins and their sister are the reason why we've tripled coverage at Arabella's. Dumbledore's source confirmed it."

Ginny's eyes went round. "You mean—the Ministry _did_ send Harry a letter about his exams? And—and You-Know-Who knows where he is?" she added in a very small voice. She clutched at Ron's arm and he tried to pat her hand reassuringly, his bloodless face betraying his suspicions about what was likely to happen to his best friend.

"But—but I thought Dumbledore would have told everyone in the Ministry that they shouldn't try to contact him!" Hermione said, her voice verging on a squeak. Ron winced; Ginny reckoned Hermione must be holding his arm _very_ tightly.

" _It's that filthy Mudblood again!_ " screeched Mrs Black, making them roll their eyes.

"Nearly everyone," Remus agreed with a nod, used to ignoring Mrs Black by now. "But somehow the berks in the Department of Magical Examinations didn't understand that he didn't just mean any _extra_ letters; he meant any _at all_."

" _What is she still doing here? Why is she still in my BLOODY HOUSE?_ "

Ron cringed at the noise and then looked like Mrs Black's ranting had given him an idea. "Or they didn't care and are working for You-Know-Who!" he shouted above the din.

Ginny frowned. "But if it's that easy, why didn't a Death Eater just send an owl to Harry ages ago? Or even when he was still in his aunt and uncle's house?" she said very loudly.

" _VILE, IMPURE, FILTHY, LOATHSOME, FETID, PUTRID—_ "

"Well, they knew where he was then, but he couldn't be touched in their house, until he broke the spell, so there wasn't much point," Remus told her in a perfectly normal voice that nonetheless carried over Mrs Black's ranting.

( _…STINKING, ROTTEN, MALODOROUS, VILE…_ )

"Used that one already!" Ron called down the hall, rolling his eyes.

"And," Remus continued, "I think Dumbledore is probably using the strongest spell he knows—apart from the old one—to protect Harry where he is now. An owl from a hostile source wouldn't be able to reach him; that's the nature of protection spells. If the intent behind sending the owl is harmful, it doesn't get where it's going, the protection spell sort of bounces it back to the sender. But an innocent letter about exams…"

"Just—just do whatever you have to do to keep him safe," Ron whispered to Remus. He sat in a nearby armchair, pounding the arms impatiently and raising a fair bit of dust. "Damn! I wish I could actually _do_ something to help!"

( _…FOUL, POLLUTED…_ )

"I know, Ron, I know. But you in particular need to rest. Inside of two months you've been attacked by the brains in the Department of Mysteries and had to regrow your femur. I think your summer homework should give you enough to worry about right now."

Hermione wrung her hands. "Well, it's hard _not_ to worry about Harry."

( _…PRESUMPTUOUS DIRTY MUDBLOOD, DEFILING MY HOUSE…_ )

"And we _have_ been doing our homework, every day," Hermione continued. "We're trying to keep our mind off other things; we've been doing practically nothing else."

Ginny found it very hard not to snort with laughter at that, but stifled it quickly, trying to sober herself. She nodded at McGonagall, Moody and Lupin and said, "Please be careful, all of you. Are—are Fred and George going to be—be fighting too? And—and Bill?"

( _…AND THE BLOOD-TRAITORS…_ )

Remus Lupin looked uncertainly at Professor McGonagall, who nodded after a moment. "The twins are going to open up their shop as usual this morning," she said briskly, "but they've given us a number of things to aid us and in fact we are using the fire in their back office to get to—to where we are going."

"Dumbledore has pulled some strings in the Department of Magical Transportation and now the only place you can go from the shop is to—to the other place, and vice versa. A very small, very private Floo network for the Order of the Phoenix," Remus told them.

( _…FOR MY HOUSE TO HOST TRAITORS TO ALL WIZARDKIND…_ )

"Now, as far as Bill goes," Remus said quietly, looking wary, "he wasn't at the meeting this morning. That's all I know."

Ron strode back to the door. "When did he last check in? He's all right, isn't he?"

Remus held up his hand. "Now, Ron. He and Severus are perfectly safe, I'm sure."

"Snape! How do we know he hasn't already sold Bill to You-Know-Who?"

"Ron!" Hermione said quickly, scowling. "He's on our side!"

"Yeah? I still haven't seen evidence of that. And if he gets our brother killed—"

"—you shall have reason to give vent to your feelings then, Mr Weasley," said a familiar voice. Albus Dumbledore walked into the pool of light outside the drawing room door, his long white beard disappearing against the perfectly white robe he wore this morning. There was a strange silence in the hall and they realised that Mrs Black had gone silent; Ginny wondered whether Dumbledore had done something to her as he passed.

Ron turned deep pink. "Good morning, sir. I—I didn't see you there."

Dumbledore smiled gently at him. "I had already worked that out. Don't worry, you three. I expect that we shall be bringing Harry back here very shortly."

Ginny wondered what the cost would be, however. Though a large guard had brought Harry to London the previous summer, they'd done it under dark of night and without Death Eaters about to converge on Harry's location. This was very different, and she feared that there might actually be a fight.

Hermione seemed to be thinking the same thing. She sprang forward and threw her arms around Professor McGonagall, quite surprising the old woman. "Oh, _do_ be careful!" she cried. After a second McGonagall gave Hermione's unruly hair an affectionate pat.

"We shall, Miss Granger—Hermione," she said softly, looking fondly at her. "All of us."

Ron shook hands with Remus. "We'll be careful," Remus told them. "There may not even be—" Remus caught Ginny's eye for a second and she had the distinct impression that he could tell that she didn't believe him. His false optimism faltered and he said to Ron, still looking at Ginny out of the corner of his eye, "We hope, at any rate, that we can get him up here to London without anyone being the wiser. Wish us luck."

The three of them nodded to Remus, McGonagall, Dumbledore and Moody, but as they were shutting the door again, Moody stopped Ginny and said gruffly, "You should know; they really have been doing homework. Haven't seen a repeat of St Mungo's."

Ron pushed the door shut quickly, looking guilty. Ginny and Hermione frowned at him.

"What did Moody mean by _that_ , Ron?" Hermione wanted to know, fists on her hips.

#/#/#

"One more thing, Harry," Tilda said, coming back from carrying a picnic hamper to the car. He looked at her suspiciously.

"What?"

"Come upstairs," she said, no hint in her voice that she might mean him harm, which made him even more suspicious. He followed her six steps behind, not wanting to get too close. He avoided holding the railing with his right hand so he'd be free to whip out his wand at a moment's notice. They reached the upstairs bath without incident, however, and Harry followed her in, trying to make sure she wasn't between him and the door.

Tilda turned to him. "Harry, I have a confession to make. I'm not what I appear to be."

Harry seemed to have stopped breathing. He wished with all his might that he had not ducked into the garage next to Mrs Figg's house a fortnight ago, he wished that he hadn't opened up to her. It was all a ghastly mistake. A dreadful, horrid, disastrous mistake…

"I'm not really blonde," she finally said, pulling a box from behind her back and handing it to him. On the front was a photograph of a smiling woman with the same dark blonde hair as Tilda, but longer, sweeping across her shoulders in a thick, shining mane.

"Oh," was the best he could do as a response. He looked at her blankly, wondering what other response she was expecting. "Erm," he tried, "you'd never know. I mean, you do a good job. It looks really natural, a lot like your dad's hair, and Jack's."

"Well, my hair is more like my mum's, sort of mousy brown, and—" She sighed. "What I meant is that you've missed the point. The dye is for _you_ , not me. To disguise you."

"Oh," Harry said, again at a loss for words. " _Me_? Blond? I don't know…" He looked uncertainly at the woman on the box, forever frozen while flinging a curtain of hair over her shoulder. When he thought of disguising himself it hadn't included _this_.

"Do you know how easy you'd be to spot, even with the other people on the beach?"

He pictured that, everyone else with light or at the very least brown hair, while his messy mop of black hair stood out, his scar bright red on his pale brow, his glasses glinting in the sun.

"All right," he conceded. "I reckon I need a disguise. But can't I just wear a hat?"

"You'll be drowning in your own sweat! And you can't wear a hat if you want to go swimming. This really isn't bad. Stinks a bit when it's still wet, that's all."

"Well—how long does it take to grow out?"

She shrugged. "I touch up my roots every four to six weeks or so. Before you know it—"

He felt a cold panic rise in his chest. "Four to six weeks! The new term starts in a month! I can't—I can't go back looking like a—isn't there _some_ other way?"

She stared at the box. "If the choice is between being safe and worrying about your looks…" She raised her eyes again and gasped, backing away from him.

"What?" Harry frowned; she motioned speechlessly at the mirror. Now it was his turn to gasp. His hair had gone so pale it was white; it was so blond it was _Malfoy_ blond. That made him think, _I knew there was a reason I didn't want to be blond._ Even as he thought this, his hair started to darken again. He felt like he couldn't breathe. _Stop!_ he thought. His hair stopped its progression from light to dark again, so that it was a slightly lighter shade of dirty blond, compared to Tilda's.

"Are—are you _controlling_ that, Harry?" she whispered in awe.

"I—I must be a—a Metamorphmagus..." he breathed, still staring into the mirror.

"A—a _what_?"

"Tonks is one," he said, realising immediately that this was a completely inadequate explanation. "She can change her hair length and colour at will. And the shape of her nose. Chin too, I think. Anyway. I never realised, but that must be why I was able to grow my hair back when Aunt Petunia cut it. The next morning, I looked just the same, even though she'd all but shaved my head. It—it must have been because of _this_."

He was speechless again, staring at himself, wondering how much of his appearance he could change. This was _much_ better than using the dye. Tilda looked like she was having a revelation. "Oh! Is that why you haven't needed to shave since that first time?"

He frowned. "What?"

"It's just—I remember talking to you about what I'd bought at the shops and your facial hair started to grow before my very eyes, it seemed. Could you do that again? A little bit of a shadow could help your disguise, if no one's used to seeing you that way."

He stared at the mirror and then closed his eyes, concentrating hard, thinking about what he'd looked like the other time. When he opened his eyes he appeared to need to shave every day (or more often) and seemed to have missed some days. He laughed out loud and Tilda smiled and laughed with him. Biting his lip, he surveyed her happiness for him and thought, _How could I think she was a Death Eater?_ He also realised that a Death Eater replacement version of Tilda wouldn't know about the one-time shaving. He could see that she was genuinely pleased. Suddenly, however, her face fell.

"Wait, Harry. Should you—should you be doing that? Isn't that doing magic outside of school? And didn't you tell me that your headmaster told you not to do _any_ magic?"

He froze for a second. "I don't know. It's not really using a wand. Of course, I didn't use a wand when I inflated Aunt Marge…"

"When you _what_?"

"Never mind. And Tonks doesn't use a wand when she does it. I think that, in a way, this _could_ just be considered a, erm, bodily function. No, sorry, not function. Talent. Something you can just _do_ if you practise a bit, like—being able to whistle. Or crossing your eyes. Or juggling."

She looked at him sceptically. "If you're sure…"

"I'm not, actually. I'm just—hopeful."

Tilda nodded. "Well, it's certainly made you look unlike _you_. And we can clip this on your frames—" She put a pair of small greenish plastic lenses over his spectacles. "—so they look like sunglasses. There! Brush your fringe over your scar and it's hard to believe you're you!" she said delightedly. Harry looked in the mirror, suddenly feeling cross. The stranger who looked back had streaky blond hair just a little longer than his had been—he didn't remember consciously lengthening it, but he _had_ been thinking a bit about the way Jack Harrison looked, who had hair the same length. His cheeks and chin were a greyish colour from the stubble he'd deliberately grown, which made him look like he was at least twenty, rather than sixteen. The sunglasses also made him look different, mysterious, like a surfer who was really a spy. He caught her delighted look out of the corner of his eye again.

"You think I look loads better like this, don't you?" he accused her, feeling like he had ice in his stomach. _She may not be a Death Eater, but—_

She stared with wide eyes, guilt written all over her face. "You just look _different_ , Harry. I never said _better_."

He snorted, turning from the mirror and leaving the small room. "Right. Just 'different.'"

She stopped and put her hands on her hips, blocking him. "Are you calling me a liar?"

Harry didn't answer but pushed past her and went down to the lounge to finish packing. He didn't have to wonder anymore about the real reason she'd pulled back from him. She found him _repulsive._ Age came into it too, of course, but if he'd looked 'different' he had a feeling that she wouldn't have found it so easy to control herself.

A moment later she came down the stairs, stomping crossly. Entering the lounge without looking at him, she went to a small cupboard and pulled an old photo album out of it. She glanced through it quickly, threw it down on the couch, open, and cried, "HA!"

He raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"There! Harold Carpenter. Nineteen eighty-one. I fancied him rotten for _three years_ before he finally noticed I existed."

Harry grudgingly stepped close enough to the couch to see the photograph. Carpenter was tall and skinny and needed a visit to the orthodontist's very badly; he had crooked spectacles sitting on what seemed to be a previously-broken nose liberally decorated with red spots and his brown hair was very messy and in need of a cut as it almost completely hid his eyes. He wore a footballer's uniform, including shorts that stopped just above his knobby knees, showing his badly-bruised and bandaged shins. (His socks had fallen and he wore no shin-guards.) Harry looked at her in disbelief. "I don't believe you. _Him_? He's the one you told me about who had all of the girls chasing him?"

She crossed her arms. "Yes. He's the one. He was very clever and funny and the best footballer we ever had. And for the longest time I was a complete nobody to him."

Harry snorted. "Then he had the worst taste in girls _ever_ ," he said, unable to hide his opinion of her. She smirked and went to turn the pages of the album.

"You think so? _This_ is what I looked like." Harry leaned over and saw a picture of a painfully thin girl with lank light-brown hair and a crooked smile, as though she'd been caught before she could smile properly, so it looked like a grimace instead. She had one hand under her chin in an awkward pose, as though trying to hide the spots on her face. (Quite a lot were still visible.) She made Eloise Midgen look glamourous.

"Oh," was his only response. She hit him on the arm with the back of her hand, laughing.

" _Oh_? That's all you can say? I thought this was my birthday, not National Puncture Tilda's Ego Day." Sparks no longer seemed to jump between them when they touched and Harry looked at her; she was still standing very close to him.

"It _is_ your birthday," he said softly. "And I still think he was a prat for not noticing you." Suddenly it seemed that if he leaned forward just a little, just a few more inches—

"Oh, my, is that the time?" she said, twisting his left arm around painfully. "We really _must_ be going before the traffic becomes impossible." She strode into the kitchen and Harry watched her go with a sigh. He looked down again at the young Tilda in the album, her wavering smile as she sat between her father and brother, as though the world wasn't nearly as predictable as she would have liked. She looked like she very badly wanted to _trust_ someone and didn't know anyone who would permit her to do that. He understood completely.

When he reached the garage with the final bag she was standing at the door that let out onto the driveway, waiting to open it. "Get into the front seat and put your Cloak on," she told him. "I don't want to open the door until you're hidden."

He nodded and climbed into the car. He threw his bag into the back seat on top of a load of other things they were taking, including two picnic hampers, what looked like abbreviated surfboards that seemed to be made of some sort of polystyrene, snorkelling equipment, and even pails and shovels. When the bag landed on the seat some of the other things shifted, but when he turned to make sure everything was all right the things in the back seat were still once more. He covered himself in his Cloak and sat back to anchor it in place, tucking the edges under his legs so there was no chance he'd be seen.

Tilda swung up the garage door when she could no longer see him and then climbed into the driver's seat. After she backed out of the garage and had the car idling at the kerb she closed the garage again. Once she was back in the car she put both hands on the wheel and gave Harry—where she assumed he was, at any rate—a sly smile.

"Next stop, Brighton!"

#/#/#

"What did you and Lestrange find in Swansea, Snape?"

Severus Snape looked at the eerie red eyes impassively, giving away nothing. "No sign of Potter, My Lord." The man beside him was a bit less impassive.

"None at all, Lestrange?"

"No, My Lord," the other wizard answered.

A slow, very disturbing smile spread across the Dark Lord's visage. "I know."

Snape momentarily looked at the other man out of the corner of his eye but otherwise tried to seem as though he'd never taken his gaze from Voldemort's. "You—you know, My Lord?" All his thoughts were focussed on keeping his breath even, his heartbeat steady and his voice deep and regular. He must betray nothing.

"Yes, I know. You see, I have since learnt that Potter is not in Swansea. He may have been, before you went, but it has been confirmed that he is no longer there."

Snape frowned, but not too deeply. That wouldn't do. "Pardon me, My Lord, but how can it be _confirmed_ that he is no longer there?"

The eerie smile spread even wider. "Because I know where he _is_ now. I tried sending owls to him, but Dumbledore's meddling means that a spell prevented them from reaching him because the intent wasn't _pure_ ," he said scornfully, his voice going up in a mocking singsong. "But the Department of Magical Examinations… Ah, yes. I had forgotten. Potter took his O.W.L.s a month ago. The results have been sent to him by Ministry owl."

The smile looked worse than Severus ever remembered it. He focussed even more effort on maintaining his facade. "But My Lord, the prophecy, as it appeared in the _Prophet_. It said that Potter has power that you know not…"

" _Crucio!_ " Voldemort cried almost lazily; Severus Snape screamed as the curse hit him and sent him into the foetal position on the floor. He was vaguely aware of the dark boots standing very still near him as the curse continued. He still screamed, but under it all he tried to maintain his train of thought. _I am a loyal servant of the Dark Lord, I am a loyal servant of the Dark Lord._ It was far harder to do at times like this, but he maintained these thoughts through the agony of the curse; it was a shock when the spell was lifted. He lay on the floor, gasping for breath, staring at the ceiling.

"You were saying, Snape?" the Dark Lord asked casually, as though he hadn't just been torturing him almost to the brink of madness.

"I'm only—only thinking of you, My Lord," he rasped, struggling to his feet. "Until you learn what this power is and how to fight it, would it be wise to take such a chance? According to the prophecy he can, well—" He braced himself for the curse.

But Voldemort waved his hand carelessly. " _And_ according to the prophecy only I can kill _Potter_. I know now that it is pointless to send lackeys after him. I must take care of this myself. But I shall not be alone; you shall come with me, both of you, and my other servants as well. Dumbledore will, no doubt, have some of his people on hand to defend Potter. You will keep them busy and allow me to dispose of him."

"My Lord, will you enter his mind, to disorient him?" Snape asked as though he didn't really care. Voldemort made a scornful noise.

"No. I have another way to seize upon his mind. According to young Malfoy here," he said, gesturing toward the boy as he entered the room, "what Potter fears above all else is— _fear_. And _I_ control the Dementors of Azkaban now." His laughter was very nearly as bad as his smile; Snape's eyes flickered to Draco Malfoy, whose shirt sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, revealing a newly-minted Dark Mark on the smooth white skin of his left forearm. Malfoy was smirking unbearably but Snape was not tempted to hex him. Years of self-conditioning held and he maintained his composure perfectly, his chin up, his eyes half-hooded. "Let him try to fight all of them. Let him send his little Patronus against an army of despair…"

"Very good, My Lord," he said quickly, understanding now what was going to happen. "So—where are we off to, My Lord?"

The dreadful smile widened. "Evidently, there is an old Squib who lives not two streets away from Potter in Surrey. She testified at his trial. And evidently Potter has been in the house next door to her while Aurors and Dumbledore's people camp in the Squib's house, oblivious to Potter's proximity but nonetheless protecting him by their presence."

Snape dropped open his jaw, unable to hide his surprise. _Next door!_ He quickly collected his thoughts; he must maintain the façade. Too many lives were at stake.

"When do we go, My Lord?" Snape asked quietly, carefully keeping his voice even. He watched Draco Malfoy out of the corner of his eye; the boy was positively avid.

"Tonight, as the sun sets. My Dementors are still making their way to me, feeding as they go. But I expect them tonight."

He laughed, the familiar cold, cruel, high laugh. A finger of ice touched Severus's spine. "And then I shall give Potter the opportunity to fulfil the prophecy in my _own_ way."

#/#/#

"How are you, Arabella?" Minerva McGonagall said upon stepping out of the fire into the small frowzy lounge with its legion of antimacassars. Mrs Figg shrugged.

"As well as can be expected," she sighed, petting one of her cats as she sat in front of the television. Moody looked around the cramped room; there were already five members of the Order present, scattered around the room. He thought he heard voices in the kitchen as well.

"So—has Dumbledore said where he is? Where we have to go to get him?"

"Not yet, but I'm sure he will," Mrs Figg said. "The others should be here shortly. I don't know where we're going to put everyone while you wait for cover of darkness."

"Can't you tell us where he is?" Remus Lupin said, frustrated.

While he was yet speaking, Dumbledore appeared silently in the middle of the room. He seemed to understand what Remus was asking. "Follow me, Remus," he said simply.

Remus, McGonagall and Moody followed him into the kitchen. Dumbledore stood at the kitchen window and nodded at the property next door. The three looked at each other, then at the simple little house, a mirror image of the one they were in.

" _That's_ where he's been all this time? Next door? _Next door_?" Remus's voice shook with frustration. Dumbledore held up his hand.

"Now, I have protected Harry during his stay there. If it weren't for the Ministry owl—"

To his surprise, Minerva muttered some rather foul names under her breath before reddening and mumbling, "Go on, Headmaster."

Dumbledore smiled. "As I was saying, if not for the Ministry owl, it is very likely that Harry would never have been discovered. As it stands, with a fixed location, Voldemort can try to look for ways to circumvent my spell. It is _not_ as efficacious as the Ancient Magic that was protecting him at his aunt's house. So—"

"He's not there."

Dumbledore looked with surprise at Moody. "Did you say something, Alastor?"

"Yes. Potter isn't there. Whilst you were talking I took advantage of—well, Potter's not there, so I don't see how we can do this."

Remus turned and stared at the kitchen window of the house opposite, a clear frustration on his face.

"He's given us the slip _again_."

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	14. Fathers

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Fourteen**

 **Fathers**

 **#/#/#**

As the car moved down the motorway to Brighton, Harry studied Tilda. She seemed very different this morning but he couldn't put his finger on the _precise_ difference. She was flushed even though she hadn't had any sun yet; she also glanced behind the car quite a lot. Since she couldn't see him under his Cloak he looked behind, too, but after a black car with dark windows that seemed to be staying with them mile after mile veered off and seemed utterly uninterested in them, he gave up and decided that she was just being careful. Harry couldn't help thinking that Moody would have heartily approved.

The silence in the car was starting to get to him, though. "Worried that we're being followed?" he finally said, making her jump.

"Harry! I forgot you were here," she said shakily, gripping the wheel with white knuckles.

"Sorry to startle you," he said, genuinely contrite. Sweat had broken out on her brow and she looked more nervous than ever. He wished he could just hold her and assure her that everything was going to be all right, though he knew no such thing. He remembered kissing her and having her kiss him back. But then he remembered again waking up in the hall, no memory of how he'd got there, nor of climbing the stairs…

"Tilda," he said softly. She didn't look startled this time.

"Yes?" she answered absentmindedly, passing a large lorry with a load of bleating sheep.

"This morning, when I was out. How long was it?"

"Out? Oh, um, I don't know." Her voice was shaking again; she wiped her brow with annoyance when the perspiration started to slip into her eyes.

"I was wondering—did I do anything, or say anything, before I—"

"I don't understand, Harry." She continued to look straight ahead.

He swallowed. He thought again of the things Tom Riddle had said to him about the way he'd manipulated Ginny. "Did I—did I _touch_ you?" he whispered.

She turned her head in his direction abruptly before quickly looking at the road again. "What do you mean?" She was barely audible.

"I mean—if—if I was possessed by—by Voldemort, you might not have realised it. He—he could have made me say things, do things, and you wouldn't have known it wasn't me." He was growing more fearful of this by the second, based purely on her strange reactions.

"Can—can he _do_ that?"

"When—when Ginny was possessed by him she was missing a lot of time. She woke up covered in blood and feathers. And then she found out someone had killed the roosters and she just knew it was _her_."

Tilda looked more like her old self as she turned to him again for a moment, frowning. " _Roosters_?"

"Because of the Basilisk. You know, the crow of the rooster is fatal to a Basilisk. If you're planning to free one, it had better be in a place with no roosters."

She laughed for a moment, looking straight ahead at the road, then sobered when he _didn't_ laugh. "Oh. You're not kidding."

"No, I'm not. When—when Voldemort possesses a person, he can make them do _anything_. When he possessed me at the Ministry, I said things, and it sounded sort of like my voice, and it was my mouth moving, but I couldn't control it, I couldn't stop it. There I was, telling Dumbledore to kill me and I couldn't stop saying it…"

Tilda frowned again. "I thought you just said that when he possesses someone they lose time, they don't remember it afterward. You _remember_ that."

Harry stopped to think about this. "Yeah. Right. I do." He didn't know what to do with this information. Perhaps if Voldemort had possessed him that morning he'd somehow Obliviated him? Or was it a different kind of possession, like Ginny and Tom Riddle?

"Did I use my wand?" he asked her suddenly. "This morning. In the hall."

"You were lying on the floor, Harry. I didn't see your wand. What are you getting at?" Tilda looked behind them again, then turned forward once more.

"I don't think anyone's following us," he said quietly. "I've been watching in the mirror."

She looked in his direction again before returning her eyes to the road. "Oh. Good. Right. I thought I should check."

He swallowed; he'd wanted to go to Brighton, he'd wanted this day, but there were still too many unanswered questions from the morning. Even if Voldemort hadn't really _done_ anything that morning, it could have been a reconnaissance trip into his brain. He might be saving more for later. "I've been thinking. Maybe it isn't the best idea to go to Brighton. Now that we're out of Little Whinging and no one seems to be following us, we could just turn around and go up to London, to the Order headquarters. London streets are complicated, but perhaps you could find number twelve, Grimmauld Place?"

She was silent for a moment, raising one eyebrow. "You're going to have to do better than that, Harry. If you expect me to take you to someplace in London, you're going to have to give me a landmark, something to go by. Babbling nonsense at me won't help."

"Babbling nonsense? I said number twelve, Grimmauld Place."

Tilda snorted. "You say that as though it actually _means_ something. Honestly Harry. How am I supposed to cope with that?"

Harry's head was swimming and for a moment he wondered whether he was about to be possessed again. "I don't understand the problem."

"You don't understand that you're spouting gobbledygook? Well, I suppose it sounds perfectly normal to _you_ , of course, but you've had five years to get used to—"

Suddenly, the reason dawned on him. "Of course! I _can't_ tell you where the house is! I'm not the Secret Keeper!"

Two vertical lines appeared between her brows as she changed lanes and passed a strange man in a green waistcoat riding a motorcycle; a beige dog was in the sidecar and both master and pet wore helmets. "Um, what?" was all she could muster, looking distracted.

"The Secret Keeper! Dumbledore. _He_ had to tell me—it was in a note. So it really sounds like nonsense? Not like I'm saying a house number and the street name?"

"House number and street name? Are you daft? It sounds more like you're bringing up your breakfast," she snorted.

He laughed, feeling the tension between them start to dissipate. "No, I'm not daft. I _can't_ tell. It's not possible." He laughed again. "I'll bet that's why that bloke at the pub said his uncle the taxi-driver might know where to find it. He was having me on."

"Oh, because of the _Knowledge_ ," she said, nodding. "I don't know. I don't think even the Knowledge will help a taxi driver find a place with a gibberish name, Harry."

He laughed again. "And when Gary said Grimmauld Place back to me he was probably just repeating whatever he heard me say. To me it sounded like he was saying Grimmauld Place, but he thought he was repeating nonsense syllables."

She shook her head. "Well, I don't see how I could possibly take you there, Harry, if you can't tell me the name of the place or where it is."

He sighed and leaned back. "No, I reckon I can't. But I have made a decision. I'm going to turn myself in tonight. Next door, at Mrs Figg's. It's better than turning myself in at the Ministry. I _might_ be able to find the entrance to that, but I'd rather not. There they'd probably let me into the entrance hall—which is ruined, because of me—and then break my wand as soon as look at me," he said miserably. "At least I stand a chance of there being some members of the Order at Mrs Figg's."

Tilda looked in his direction for a long moment, then back at the road. "You think—"

"I think," he interrupted her, "it would be a very bad idea for me to spend another night in your house," he said quietly, looking away, clenching his fists against his thighs.

She nodded. "You're probably right," she said, sounding like she was having trouble choking out the words. "You're probably right," she whispered again.

#/#/#

They were silent during the rest of the drive. Once they were in Brighton, Harry looked around appreciatively. He would be cooped up in the Order headquarters soon enough and wouldn't really be free again until returning to Hogwarts. When they passed Brighton Pavilion he pressed his Invisibility Cloak-covered nose to the window, drinking it all in.

"Harry, I think you don't need to be under the Cloak now," she said as they passed a pleasure pier. He hesitated, unsure about the rest of the world seeing his altered state.

"Right. But wouldn't it look strange if a person suddenly appeared next to you?"

"I'm going to park behind Marvin and Bran's cafe. They'd skin me if they knew I was here without seeing them. They'll _love_ you. No one will see us by the rubbish tips."

He hoped she was right, but sure enough, no one seemed to be about when she pulled up behind a string of small painted brick buildings with overflowing tips backed up against them. He furtively took off the Cloak, checking his appearance in the mirror. It was almost as strange as taking Polyjuice Potion to enter the Slytherin common room.

He stashed the Cloak under his seat and followed her around to the front of the café. They were still doing a brisk lunch business and Tilda had to try three times to get a waiter to stand still long enough to talk to her. "Yeah, Bran's in the kitchen and Marv's on the phone with some bloke about cocktail umbrellas or something like that," the distracted young man said over his shoulder before carrying a large tray of food to a raucous table in the corner. Harry's nose twitched, followed by his stomach growling, and he realised that breakfast had been a very long time ago. He'd never had Mexican food, which seemed to be the café's specialty, but he felt willing to try anything at the moment.

Suddenly Tilda ran up to a burly man with sandy hair and threw her arms around his neck. He laughed and hugged her tightly, swinging her round. This was very dangerous as a waitress was trying to carry a precarious tray of drinks past them.

"Mattie!" he cried, kissing her full on the mouth. Harry scowled, wanting to peel the great git's hands off her, wanting to hug her to _him_ , let the world know they were together. Even though they technically weren't and _couldn't_ be.

"Bran, you great queen!" she cried, laughing, her feet still not touching the floor. A very small man with a deep tan, short, dark curling hair, and a huge moustache that completely hid his mouth came bounding out of a swinging door. His dark eyes sparkled with fun; when Bran released Tilda he hugged her firmly around the waist, his eyes level with her chest, making Harry scowl again. She kissed him on the forehead.

"Hello, Marv. How _are_ you both?" she said, standing back and holding Marvin's hand in her left and Bran's in her right, swinging them and laughing.

"Never better now that our favourite girl is here," Bran said, winking at her cheekily, steering her to a table. Marvin, however, noticed Harry standing awkwardly with his hands thrust into his jean pockets.

"And 'oo 'ave we 'ere?" Marvin said in an exaggerated Cockney, sauntering up to Harry and waggling his eyebrows. "Someone forgot to tell you that school's out, Mattie? Decided to give yourself a little fringe-benefit of the job without telling the headmistress?"

 _Bloody hell_ , Harry thought. _Do I look that young_?

"Marvin!" Tilda said nervously. "He's—I'm not his teacher anymore—" She turned bright red and Harry felt his own face grow hot, wishing she'd simply denied it.

"Oohoo!" Bran crowed. "So he _was_ one of your pupils. Tsk, tsk, tsk, Mattie. What did you do, look him up as soon as he became legal?"

Harry drew himself up, putting his arm around Tilda and looking Bran in the eye. "Actually, if you must know, I contacted her." It was true in its way.

Marvin slapped his knee, laughing. "Oh, my. He's _adorable._ And _you_ obviously made a lasting impression, didn't you, darling?" He nudged her with his elbow.

Tilda was still bright red, trying to simultaneously sit and extricate herself from Harry's arm. He sat beside her while Bran and Marvin sat across from them; Bran's subtle wave to a waiter resulted in the young man running off to get drinks.

"So! Tell us everything," Marvin gushed, grinning at Tilda, who hadn't stopped blushing.

"Does he have a name?" Bran wanted to know. "Or doesn't he mind people talking about him in the third person, as though he isn't here?"

"Um…" Tilda said, looking sideways at Harry.

"James," Harry said quickly. When both men seemed to be waiting for more, he noticed a reflection of himself in a mirror on the opposite wall of the café; he still couldn't get used to seeing himself as a _blond_.

"Malfoy. James Malfoy," he said suddenly.

" _Malfoy_?" Bran said. "As in _Mal-fwah_? Isn't that French?"

"Yeah, for Sodding Bastard," he said automatically, momentarily forgetting that this was supposed to be _his_ name.

This sent Bran and Marvin into uproarious laughter again, however. "Don't get on well with your dad, yeah?" Marvin asked.

Harry looked at him sheepishly. "Is it that obvious?" He wondered momentarily how he _would_ have got on with James Potter as a father. Remembering the immature boy pulling pranks on Snape at fifteen didn't help.

Bran snorted. "He can't be any worse than _my_ dad. When I came out—"

" _Bran_ ," Tilda said pointedly, gesturing to Harry with her head.

"What?" Bran protested. "He's obviously not—" He stared at her for a few moments and then reached out to frame her face in his hands. "Oh! I know what it is about you, Mattie-girl! I should have seen it before. You've been properly shagged, you have!"

"NO!" Harry and Tilda cried together, her voice much louder than his.

" _No shagging_!" Tilda said more quietly, in a desperate whisper, glancing at Harry out of the corner of her eye.

Bran and Marvin looked at each other knowingly. "Come on, Loves," Marvin said confidentially, leaning over the table. "You can tell _us_. We won't breathe a word."

Harry looked at Tilda's nervous red face, then back at her friends. "Honestly. It's nothing like that," he said, wishing he could truthfully say the opposite.

"As I said!" Marvin crowed, reaching out to pinch Harry's cheek quite painfully. " _Adorable_! I can't blame you, Mattie, I really can't."

"Ow!" Harry cried, holding his cheek after it was finally released. "I _told_ you—"

"—we can't stay for long. Just wanted to pop in and say hello," Tilda said with a shaking voice, standing quickly.

"But our drinks have just arrived!" Bran said. A waiter set down tall glasses of pink liquid that smelled distinctly alcoholic and sported small rainbow-striped umbrellas.

Marvin was apologetic. "Oh, I'm sorry, Mattie. I didn't mean to put the pair of you on the spot. But what are we to think when you show up with _him_ and you look like—well, like you _do_? Forgive me, Mattie-love? Pleaseplease _please_?" He batted his eyes at her, making her laugh.

"You've got it _all wrong_!" she said through her laughter. "Honestly. Har—er, James and I are _just friends._ He's never been to the seaside before and his unc—er, parents entrusted me to bring him on a little trip while they deal with a family emergency. Funeral plans. Distant relative, nothing too close to home, but there are messy details to be seen to. Tiresome meetings with solicitors. This way James can have a little holiday on his own and they don't have to worry about him while they're halfway across the country."

"So you're _babysitting_?" Bran said with a smirk.

"NO!" Harry and Tilda cried again, Harry's voice much louder than hers this time.

#/#/#

"Actually, this may be all my fault," Ginny blurted out.

Hermione stared at her in shock. " _You_?"

Ginny looked sheepishly at them both. "It never occurred to me that—well, I mean, after St Mungo's, I mentioned to the twins that it might be a bit quieter around here because the pair of you might not be having so many rows. They wanted to know why and—"

Hermione waited, frowning. "Yes?" she finally prompted her.

"Well, you know. I told them what had happened at St Mungo's."

Hermione was indignant. "And how do _you_ know?"

Hermione glared malevolently at Ron; Ginny cleared her throat and mumbled, "Moody. Magic eye. He saw through the door of Ron's room."

Hermione went white. "I—I didn't know that." Then she looked panicked. "Oh my. Your mum was out there, wasn't she?"

"Don't worry about that," Ginny said quickly. "She'd gone off to talk to Dad. No, it was Moody and me, and, let me see—Remus! That's it. I think. Yes. No Mum."

"But—but you _told_ Fred and George," Hermione said softly; Ginny wasn't sure whether this was because she was cross.

"Well, just that the pair of you had sort of—well, that you were more than friends now."

Hermione noticed Ron looking guilty as well; she turned to him. "And what did _you_ do the first time the twins brought this up?"

Ron looked shocked and hurt, but Ginny had years of practice when it came to seeing through him. "What do you mean?" he asked, his voice squeaking a bit, betraying him.

"I mean, the first time you had a bragging opportunity, what did you _do_?" Hermione asked, tapping her foot impatiently. Ron moved his mouth soundlessly; this was evidently enough for Hermione, who threw up her hands. "I see. That's how it is. You pretend to—to—but it's all just so you can look like a big man in front of your brothers."

Ginny felt distinctly uncomfortable; a tear glimmered in the corner of Hermione's eye. "There's another reason why it's my fault," Ginny said quickly. Hermione turned from Ron and gave her a look that made her feel even more uncomfortable. "You see, I just assumed. What you were doing. You know, because of what Michael and I did."

"What? _Corner_? What did you do, sneak off to broom cupboards for snogging? Or _worse_?" Ron was bright red. Ginny gawped at him before remembering herself.

"Get a grip, Ron! Of course there was nothing _worse_! What do you take me for? And I didn't—well, I just wasn't that interested in it. Or him, either." She shrugged, committed to telling the truth. "I sort of looked at it all as—well, as what boyfriends and girlfriends _do_. I should've known you'd be different, Hermione. I didn't think. Of _course_ you haven't been snogging when you haven't been rowing…"

Ron snorted. "Too right," he said in a low, disgruntled voice, kicking the carpet and frowning. This, however, caused Hermione to look crosser than ever.

"We have! A little," she added feebly, looking at her feet.

" _Very_ little," Ron said, throwing himself into the armchair again. "Why do you think I didn't correct the twins?" he grumbled. "Couldn't have lived it down, could I, if I finally had a girlfriend and they found out that all we did was _revision_." Ginny was trying to shake her head at Ron to warn him to shut up, but he wasn't paying attention to her.

Hermione looked stricken. "Are you—are you saying that I'm cold and unfeeling? _Me_? Wasn't I the one who worked so hard to get you and Harry talking again after you had the temerity to suggest that he'd put his own name in the Goblet of Fire?"

"I think I'll be leaving now," Ginny whispered, edging toward the door, wishing she'd kept her mouth shut. Although she didn't really care for the thought, she wished her assumptions about Ron and Hermione had been correct; Ron might stand a chance at getting some snogging when this new row passed. _If_ it passed.

"Hermione," she said softly before closing the door. Hermione turned to her in surprise, as thought she'd forgotten Ginny was there. She had simply been gazing in distress at Ron, who refused to look at her. This didn't seem like a simple row. "Don't blame him, really. It's my fault. Please. Be cross with me if you must, but—"

"We need to talk. Ron and I. We need to sort out a few things," Hermione said in a shaking voice. This didn't reassure Ginny, but she nodded and tried to smile.

"Right. Which is why I'm going. I just—I needed to tell you."

She closed the door very gently, leaning on it in relief. The front hall was empty; the members of the Order had gone and she thought again of Harry. _Please protect them all, please protect them all,_ she thought desperately. At least Ron and Hermione had a distraction from what was going on. She envied them their row. Heaving a great sigh, she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, feeling annoyed. Ron and Hermione had served to distract her for a little while, too, but now it all came rushing back.

 _Harry_. She'd convinced herself she was over him for some very good reasons. After her second year, when she was constantly worrying about Sirius killing him or Dementors making him black out, she'd told herself quite sternly that Harry didn't think about her that way. That's all there was to it. (It helped that she'd gone to the hospital wing while he slept and saw that he'd weighed down her singing get-well card to keep it quiet. That hurt a great deal, but she knew it was for her own good; it gave her resolve.)

And then she'd managed to behave somewhat like a human toward Harry when they'd gone to the World Cup. She was approaching normalcy when she was around him. But she thought she'd chew her fingernails down to the quick and pull out her hair strand by strand while he flew around the Hungarian Horntail. After that she decided that she couldn't take worrying about him anymore. It was too much. She didn't want to think Harry couldn't handle himself, but there were no guarantees, were there? It was a miracle he hadn't been incinerated. And then Michael started paying attention to her at the Yule Ball and she told herself, _This is good. I can do this. I can focus on another boy. Someone whose life isn't constantly at risk. Someone I can talk to without blithering because I'm too nervous not to act like an idiot._

And it had worked. Michael had distracted her and reminded her that a world existed outside of Harry. She discovered that she _could_ talk to Harry and behave like a normal person, even be his friend. But _now_ , now Death Eaters and Aurors and members of the Order were converging on his hiding place and who knew what might happen? The prophecy said that Harry was going to kill You-Know-Who or vice versa. But she couldn't think about that, nor about the people who might get hurt along the way. She pulled a letter out of her pocket. _I need to distract myself again,_ she thought desperately. Otherwise she'd pace a hole in the floor big enough to make the kitchen stairs obsolete. Sniffing back more tears, she flattened the letter against the wall and read:

 _Dear Ginny,_

 _Hope you're having a good holiday. I miss talking to you, too. Mum had a brilliant surprise for me when I got home. She enrolled me in the summer program at the Royal Academy! She showed them some of my drawings, including one of you I did last Christmas hol…_

Ginny wiped her eyes so that she could read the letter more clearly. _It's going to be all right,_ she thought fiercely. _They're going to be all right and bring Harry back to London, and we can be friends and I can tell him about Dean, and Ron and Hermione can have rows, and everything will be as it was last year, except for Sirius…_ She folded the letter again and put it back in her pocket. At the thought of Sirius, she suddenly felt very, very weary of being strong, of pretending things weren't affecting her, of making out that she wasn't worried about half her family being killed or arrested, that she wasn't worried about Harry, and that she didn't miss Sirius _dreadfully_.

She was tired. Just _tired_.

Wiping her face again, she started climbing the stairs, deciding to seek out Buckbeak. Buckbeak would let her have a good cry on his soft feathers and no one need ever know. Afterward she could be as flippant and careless as ever and go back to pretending.

#/#/#

Harry stared at the summer sky; clouds frequently shifted before the sun, sending the beach into a grey half-light that made him think of waiting for rain in the north of Scotland while being cooped up in the library, listening to Hermione drone about Goblin rebellions. A lot of good that did me, he thought crossly. He didn't even get to take the ruddy exam for History of Magic, thanks to Voldemort.

"I'm sorry, Harry," Tilda said suddenly, very quietly. She sat in a deck chair, holding a novel. He wondered whether she'd been watching him.

"You said they'd love me. You didn't guarantee that I'd love _them_ , so you don't have to apologise," he said, unable to keep an edge out of his voice.

She laughed and then cleared her throat when she saw that _he_ wasn't laughing. "They're dears, really. We met years ago, at an antique shop in Petworth we all go to frequently. That's how I met most of my friends who also come to Brighton. I'm just glad that you didn't, well, have an immature reaction to their being a, well—"

"Couple?"

"Yes. A couple."

He shrugged. "I didn't react to your sister and Nick, did I?"

"I know, but they're men, not women."

"I _did_ notice that, you know."

She sighed. "I'm sorry. I should have given you some credit."

Harry sighed and looked out to sea. "I have no reason to treat someone shabbily just for that. After all, just about anything my uncle doesn't like is something I can usually get behind." He looked at her quickly. "Erm, that's just an expression." She laughed loudly and after a nervous moment, he joined in. "I just meant—he's pretty homophobic. Dudley's turning out just like him. Last summer I had nightmares about Cedric, about seeing him killed, and I was crying out his name in my sleep." He swallowed, unable _not_ to see the images in his mind again, the staring, empty eyes after the curse had ripped the life from Diggory's body. "Dudley wanted to know if Cedric was my boyfriend. And when his school sent home a note about Dudley's poor marks Uncle Vernon said that he didn't want Dudley to be a _nancy boy_ anyway."

Tilda sat up indignantly, whipping off her sunglasses. "Why, that great berk! To equate getting good marks with—with—and to treat both as _bad things_ ," she sputtered.

Harry laughed ruefully. "Yeah. That's Uncle Vernon. His sister is worse, believe it or not. I've managed to live with _him_ for years without performing accidental magic—well, not much—but the moment Marge walks in the door…"

She sighed. "I didn't see your uncle often while you and Dudley were at the school, luckily. In a way I wish I _had_ seen him more. I don't know. If I'd known how bad he was maybe I could have helped Dudley break away from him a bit, urge him to think for himself." She sighed again. "Fathers. Hard to love them and hard not to. Even—" She stopped, putting on her sunglasses again.

He thought of his own father, turning Snape upside down and calling him names. How would his last five years of school have been different if James Potter hadn't been such a prat? If Snape didn't hate him, and hate Harry because of him? Harry plunged his hand into the sand beside the blanket on which he was reclining, digging a hole, angrily pushing the sand aside, relishing the pain when his knuckle scraped on a broken shell.

"Hard not to love a father even when he's a prat? I don't know; my dad's managed to ruin the last five years of school for me from the _grave_. He was quite talented at the father thing, if you ask me. Uncle Vernon managed to turn Dudley into a not-so-small version of himself, but he's had it easy since he's _alive_. My dad did what he did without even being around for me to hate him directly," he said in a rough, low voice, still digging.

"Harry," she said softly. But he didn't want to be talked out of his rage. Suddenly he thought of something that made him even crosser.

"And Sirius! Godfathers aren't much better, if you ask me. If he'd—if he'd only _said_ something the first time I contacted him at Grimmauld Place," he cried, trying not to weep, having just thought of this; "if he'd just shouted at me, _Use the Christmas gift!_ and rung off, or whatever they call it when you're using a fireplace to talk to someone, then—then he wouldn't be—it's _all his bloody fault!_ " He wiped his face on his arm angrily. Even with her sunglasses hiding her eyes Tilda looked stricken.

"Harry—" she started to say again, putting her hand on his arm. He stood impatiently.

"No! I'm tired of it. Someone dies and that makes him a saint? You can't just mistreat someone for seven years and not expect there to be _consequences_! And how _stupid_ was it for Sirius to sit there and listen to me go on and on and not say a bloody word about the _mirror_ and how I should have used that instead? Would it have killed him to—" Harry froze, his words echoing in his head.

"Harry, I know you're angry with them both. With your dad and godfather. And maybe that's good; maybe that will help you as you grieve. I know that I'm still working through some of the things my dad did that—"

"Oh," Harry said abruptly, "you don't know the half of it when it comes to _your_ dad."

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

A surge of energy pulsed through him and he wondered for a moment whether he _was_ possessed, whether some other entity inside him was prompting him to say it. "I mean he _wasn't_ framed. He bloody well did exactly what he was accused of." Somehow he felt that if he no longer had a perfect dead father, no one should have one. But it wasn't just that; a part of him wanted to punish her for having done the right thing the night before, for giving him the worst night of his life. He was surprised at himself; he'd never suspected that loving someone also made it easier to _hurt_ them. He watched her reaction, relishing her anguish.

"How—how can you say that, Harry?"

"I found the silver, Tilda. It was under the bloody bed." He described it and she covered her mouth in horror, looking like she wished he'd stop. But he didn't. "He wasn't convicted because someone cleverly framed him. He _did_ it. I reckon he forgot what he did with the silver after he was released, which is why you still have it. Unless you've known all along and were going to sell it off with some other stuff eventually."

"Harry! I would never do that! I—I had no idea." She took off her sunglasses again and Harry started to feel remorse move through him; he'd utterly destroyed her image of her dad. Tears rolled down her face and she abruptly snatched up her handbag, striding purposefully away from him. Harry scrambled to keep up with her.

"Hang on!" he said, catching her up. "I have to stay with you to be safe!"

She whirled on him. "Then keep up! I don't have a mobile. I need to find a phone box."

As he followed, he asked, "A phone box? Why?"

Without stopping, she said tearfully, "So I can call my mum in Australia. So I can beg her forgiveness. My dad is gone but my mum isn't, not yet."

Harry nodded. The urge to make her suffer, to hurt her, had passed. He didn't know what to do now beyond trudge through the sand after her, trying to avoid other people lying in their path, colourful towels and blankets strewn across the beach. When they finally reached the pleasure pier they quickly located a bright red phone box. Harry sank down onto his haunches outside it while Tilda shut herself inside.

She talked to her mum for a long time. At one point he looked up to see her and found that she had sunk down like him and was crying freely. He put his hand on the glass, aching for her, feeling terribly guilty about what he'd done, but she didn't seem to blame him; she put her own hand on the glass, pressed against the other side of the pane, smiling feebly at him. When she finally emerged from the phone box she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. He didn't want to let her go but finally did, brushing the hair out of her tear-streaked face.

"What happened?"

Tilda kissed him on the cheek and took his hand in hers. She looked peaceful, and as they walked back to the beach she whispered in a wondrous voice, " _I got my mum back_."

#/#/#

Remus paced Mrs Figg's kitchen floor again. Moody stood peacefully nearby, peering through brick and mortar into the house next door for any signs of life.

"Hmph!" he said. "Fridge full of takeaway food. Can't she be bothered to _cook_?"

Remus frowned. He'd seen the woman next door once or twice and thought she looked nice enough but not like someone who bothered cooking for just herself. He didn't usually cook for himself either; if he was working for Dumbledore he ate on the run and otherwise depended upon Molly's invitations to Grimmauld Place.

"So—was he hiding in her house under his Invisibility Cloak?" Remus asked Moody.

"Yes, he has his Cloak with him," a familiar voice said suddenly. As Dumbledore calmly ambled into the room Remus whirled and then breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank goodness. That he has his Cloak and that you're here," Remus said, when Dumbledore put his hand on Remus's shoulder in reassurance.

"Alastor," he said, smiling and nodding to the old Auror.

"What else can you tell us about Potter?" Moody said gruffly.

"I have used some instruments that I have at my disposal and I have seen Harry in his present location. He is perfectly safe."

"Well, can't you go to him and keep him from coming back here? This is one place where he definitely _won't_ be safe," Remus said quietly.

Dumbledore shook his head sadly. "Unfortunately, that would draw attention to him. He is in a very public place. Any communication I could send would make him stand out, and right now he is doing an exemplary job of _not_ standing out. We are going to need to prepare ourselves to fight for his safety when he returns. I have received authorisation to use a Portkey of my own making to return Harry to London. It wasn't easy, especially as I didn't ask for permission when I gave one to Harry to return him to Hogwarts from the Ministry, but I have a few friends in the Department of Transportation and Cornelius is quite busy overseeing Azkaban without the Dementors."

"He's safe. Good. That's good," Remus said in a shaking voice, staring out the window once more. Dumbledore still had his hand on his shoulder.

"Have faith, Remus. I know that you are—"

"—lonely? Why would that be? I only just lost my last friend in the world, after thinking he was a traitor and a murderer for twelve years," he said bitterly.

"Sirius was _not_ your last friend. Another friend will be coming to that house a little later," Dumbledore said, nodding at the Harrison home, "and you are here to help him."

Remus gave Dumbledore a contrite nod and smile. "Sorry. It's just—"

"I know. Harry feels the same way about what happened to Sirius. After he vented his feelings my office was quite the sight," he added with a small smile.

Remus wanted to laugh but couldn't quite get his mouth to turn up at the corners. "I don't have the luxury of youthful fury. I'm supposed to engage in constructive activities."

Dumbledore waved his hand at the empty windows of the house next to Mrs Figg's. "Your opportunity to do just that should, unfortunately, be arriving all too soon."

#/#/#

The beach was nearly deserted as the sun sank lower in the sky. Harry and Tilda had packed most of their things into the car again and carried only their shoes as they walked hand in hand along the water's edge, fully clothed instead of in their bathing outfits.

"When are you going to Australia?"

She stopped and gazed at the blazing clouds to the southwest. "I'll try to get a ticket tomorrow, I reckon."

He nodded. "It's just as well that I'm going, then."

She smiled at him. "You're not an imposition, Harry. If not for you I wouldn't have called her. I wouldn't _know_."

"You'd have found the silver eventually."

"Perhaps. But it's already sat there for years and years. Years that I lost." She turned away, pretending to admire the sky.

Harry squeezed her hand. "And you're not cross with her now that you know the truth?"

She started walking again, very slowly. "It may sound strange, but knowing that she's the one who stole the silver and that Dad went to prison to protect her makes a huge difference. She didn't leave him because she was ashamed of _him_. She was ashamed of _herself_. She couldn't look him in the eye after he did that for her."

Harry shook his head as they walked. "That was the last thing I expected."

Tilda laughed and he loved how carefree she sounded, as though a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. "Do you remember that I said I _wished_ my dad had really done it? So he wouldn't have gone to prison for no reason? Well, this is nearly as good. He was a _good person_ , not someone too daft to know that he shouldn't mention _aliens_ when he was on trial! He did that to destroy his credibility." Her laugh rang out across the water. "He wasn't _stupid_ _!_ And he didn't want to leave us without a mum when we were wee little ones. Mum only did it to help, she said, because Dad was working himself ragged and we _still_ never seemed to have any money. Jack was a bit of a surprise when he came and she blamed herself for that."

She sat cross-legged on the sand and Harry sat beside her, still holding her hand. "She'd grown up going to Reese Hall when she was a girl. For a while she even dated the eldest son. He showed her where things like the good silver were kept. But when she met Dad she stopped seeing other boys. Northrop-Reese was _very_ put out by this. After she was married and I came along he found out that we—" She ducked her head.

"What?"

"Well, that we lived in a grotty little council flat. He never stopped fancying my mum and he invited us to live in the lodge on his estate. Dad was hired to work on the old house, which was practically falling down. But the old man still had nineteen-thirties ideas about how much manual labourers should make; he didn't pay Dad fair wages at all. He and Mum were supposed to go to university, but they started seeing each other just after they took their A-levels and found out that I was on the way soon after that, so they got married very quickly." She turned deep pink under her tan and Harry smiled.

"It happens," he said softly. She laughed.

"Yes, but it meant that neither of them was really prepared to support a family. Dad's family couldn't help and Mum's family didn't want to. They didn't approve of Dad. They liked Northrop-Reese, thought Mum should have stuck to that lot. Mum's family had a bit of money. Not that it matters, since they disowned her for marrying Dad."

"Hmm. So this not-talking-to-relatives runs in the family?"

"You could say that." She shook her head. "Stupid, I know. The problem was—well, Mum really wanted us to get out from under the shadow of Reese Hall. She told me something she probably never would have if Dad were still alive."

Harry put his other hand over their joined fingers. "What?" he whispered.

"She went to him. To Northrop-Reese. With a full accounting of the work Dad had done for them and the wages he _should_ have received. She knew Dad would never do it; he'd think that was the next best thing to begging. But—but Northrop-Reese wanted something from Mum…" Her voice faded to nothing and she gazed grimly at the waves beating relentlessly on the dark, wet sand.

"Bastard," Harry grumbled sympathetically, squeezing her hand. She nodded.

"After that she decided to steal the silver. He'd had a gambling problem for years and she assumed that he'd be suspected. She made sure he was out drinking with his friends, so he wouldn't have a good alibi, just other people who were three sheets to the wind, like him. But it was raining, so Mum used Dad's wellies. She led the cops right to our door."

Harry grimaced. "Why didn't they find the silver?"

To his surprise, she laughed loudly, throwing her head back. "That's where she was really clever. She walked _right past them_ with the silver and they never knew."

"How?"

She looked at him wickedly and whispered, " _It was in Jack's pram._ "

He couldn't help laughing too. "Where was Jack, then?"

"Also in the pram. She put the silver in first, inside a large burlap bag, all flattened out. Then she put blankets on top of that and finally Jack rode on top, fast asleep. She told the police she would, of course, co-operate completely. They could search the lodge while she walked us round the park on the estate. She wouldn't interfere. She didn't even mind a policewoman escorting us. She thought it would be all right, even though Dad was arrested, because he could say he'd been at home with us the night before. It was true, as Mum had gone out. She didn't count on Dad working out what she'd done and deciding to take the fall for her. That upset her for years after. She wanted him to try to _beat_ it. Instead Dad was stopping just short of saying, 'It's a fair cop.' He was afraid if he rolled over without any fight at all they'd suss out that he was covering up for her. That's why there was a trial. The trial that my dad purposefully sabotaged to save my mum."

She rose again, brushing sand from her bottom. Harry put his hand on her arm. "Are you sure you're not cross with her still? Because she let you think she was dreadful for years?"

Tilda shook her head, her eyes moist. "No. She's punished herself long enough. She didn't think she deserved our love, me and Jack. Audrey wouldn't be parted from her, that's the reason she went to live with Mum, but I couldn't look at her after she said she was leaving Dad. I couldn't believe she was _doing_ that to him. And Mum thought Jack should be with Dad because, she said, a son needs his father."

She said the last words very quietly, looking away from him, but her hand sought his again. Without saying anything more, she pulled him to her and put her arms around his waist, putting her head on his shoulder. He tentatively reciprocated, his hands pressed flat against her back, his breath catching as he wondered what she wanted. Their position was very similar to when they'd been dancing and he'd kissed her. He didn't dare move his head toward hers this time, though; he didn't fancy suffering more rejection just as they were having their last few precious hours together.

She surprised him by being the one to move her mouth toward his, gently pressing, asking her silent question. When she had slowly pulled away from him again she took both of his hands in hers, searching his face. He knew that that was a good-bye kiss; it had been nothing like the hungry, frantic kisses of the night before. The only word for it that he could think of was _sweet_. It was a sweet, gentle kiss, and he knew it was their last.

"I know you had some mad idea last night that I was supposed to teach you to be a man," she said softly. "But I think that's backwards, Harry. I think _you're_ supposed to teach _me_ how to be a kid again." She smiled lovingly at him and squeezed his hands.

His lips still tingled from that final kiss. "Well, isn't someone going to have to teach me how to be a kid first?" he said ruefully. Then he wished he hadn't been so self-pitying when he saw the stricken look on her face.

"Oh, you poor thing! I'll bet you never—"

"Aaah!" he cried out in surprise as she suddenly poked him in the ribs, tickling him. As soon as she did this she turned and ran from him, her sandals swinging from her hand.

"You're _It_!" she cried, laughing, her hair coming down as she fled.

"Not for long!" he answered, belatedly stumbling after her, floundering in the sand and trying not to drop his trainers.

By the time he had caught up to her, panting, she had reached the spot where the light from the pleasure pier bathed the sand in a golden glow.

"You're _It_ ," he wheezed, clapping his hand on her shoulder. She grinned at him.

"Put your trainers on. We have work to do."

He stared at her, still trying to catch his breath. "Work?"

She nodded at the lights, the music and noise and laughing people on the pier. "Lesson Number One in How to be a Kid: What to Do at a Pier. Are you ready?"

He grinned at her as he pulled on his trainers.

"Ready!"

#/#/#

"Working late, are we, Mr. Weasley?"

Percy looked up at the squat figure standing in the doorway of the anteroom to the Minister's office. He stood behind his desk, his hand with his wand below the top, so she couldn't see him use it. "Yes, Madam Umbridge. How are you feeling? I don't believe I've seen you since you've returned to London."

She walked slowly to his desk, not answering his question. "And just what sort of work would be keeping you here so very late, Mr. Weasley?"

An alarm went off in his head. _She knows, she knows, she knows_ …

He cleared his throat, the better to use the most pompous voice at his disposal. "Well, as you know, on the last day of the month the department heads send their monthly reports and I need to read and summarise them for the Minister. He can't be expected to read every one of them." He waved his left hand at the pile of parchments on his desk.

Her mouth twisted unpleasantly. "That is all you were doing? You weren't—contacting someone you _shouldn't_ be using the Minister's fire?"

Percy swallowed; he hadn't been, not this evening, but on other occasions he _had_ had used the Minister's fire, as it was more secure than the one in his flat.

"No, Madam Umbridge," he said truthfully. She looked sceptical.

"Hmph! You haven't been—contacting your _true_ Master?" she snarled, placing both hands on his desk, thrusting her grotesque visage at him. He fought the urge to recoil.

"My _what_?" He tried to sound outraged. "I'm loyal to the Minister. It is my job to—"

" _HE KNOWS, DOESN'T HE_?" she shrieked, turning red in the face.

"He? He _who_?" Percy sputtered, genuinely wondering to whom she was referring.

"Won't talk, eh? Perhaps this will loosen your tongue!" she bellowed, and before he knew what was happening she was pointing her wand at him.

" _CRUCIO!_ "

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	15. Discovery

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Fifteen**

 **Discovery**

 **#/#/#**

Unexpectedly, Umbridge lifted her wand, breaking the spell. She surveyed Percy critically.

"I thought I'd lost you there for a minute," she said in that annoyingly sweet, high-pitched voice, a slow smile spreading across her toad-like visage. "What a great loss that would have been to the Ministry," she added insincerely.

Percy attempted to swallow but his throat felt like a desert. As the pain of the Cruciatus Curse continued he realised that an eerie silence had taken over the room; he didn't realise why until he tried to scream again from the pain and found that he could no longer produce sound with his throat. He'd screamed himself hoarse. That was likely why she thought she'd tortured him into madness; he'd stopped making noise.

Percy had been standing when she'd cast the spell but now he lay sprawled on the floor, his desk chair pushed to one side. The back of his head ached where it had struck the chair on his way down, but that was a welcome, normal sort of pain after the curse. He still held his wand, though.

He tried to clear his throat, coughing and hacking for almost a full minute before he managed to croak, "I don't know what you think you're doing," in a barely audible voice, as he stood slowly on shaky legs, "but I shall have you up on charges for that." He knew he didn't sound very convincing, even to himself, and her unwavering smile told him that she did not think of him as a threat. Her expression changed abruptly, however, when he pointed his wand at her and whispered, " _Expelliarmus!_ "

She flew backward a couple of feet, striking his office door with a soft thump, her wand flying in a graceful arc to Percy's left hand. He quickly opened the top drawer of his desk and thrust the wand deep into its recesses, closing it immediately. The noise of the drawer slamming echoed in the small anteroom.

"Now, then," Percy continued to whisper, his wand still pointed at her. It was extremely painful to speak at all, but he ignored this and soldiered on. "Sit." He gestured to the chair opposite his desk and she complied, her mouth twisting. "It is _you_ who shall do the talking now. First you shall explain some things you have said. I was _not_ using the fire to speak to anyone. Who did you think I _might_ be speaking to?"

She started to rise but he flicked his wand; strong ropes immediately bound her to the chair and she struggled against them for a minute before giving up and glaring at him. "You know very well who I meant. Your true Master."

His eyes narrowed as he glared back at her. "And just who would that be?" he said, his voice breaking as if he was thirteen again.

"Don't you know?" she said in an annoying, high-pitched sing-song, smirking as he broke into a rasping, painful cough again.

"I want to hear _you_ say it!" he snarled before resuming his coughing fit. She looked entirely too happy about the difficulty he was having speaking.

With a sneer on her ugly face, she said, "You'll have to torture _me_ to get me to say anything else." There was laughter in her small, beady eyes, clearly confident that he would never do this. Percy felt like putting his hands around her non-existent neck and _squeezing_ , just to prove her wrong.

He stepped back, nodding. "Very well. Interrogation isn't my forte, anyway," he whispered, as though it didn't matter to him. "That will be someone else's concern, after you're brought up on charges." He shuddered at the memory of his own interrogation, a year earlier, before he'd taken the job with the Minister…

It had been a nightmare. Evidently Madam Bones had happened by his office while he'd been out to lunch and she'd seen one of the letters Mr Crouch had sent him concerning carrying out his duties in his department head's absence. Both the content and form of the letter concerned her; she had been used to corresponding regularly with Barty Crouch, she said, and she both knew his style of writing and style of _hand_ writing. This letter reflected neither. When she'd confronted Percy about it he said that he had assumed the change in handwriting was due to Mr Crouch's illness, but she'd given him a very sceptical look before leaving the office.

And then Mr Crouch—raving mad Mr Crouch—had turned up at Hogwarts before disappearing off the face of the earth.

And the interrogations began.

Every day he'd answered tricky questions much of the day and was still expected to do his work (and consequently, Mr Crouch's work) in the midst of the inquiry. He had been at the office every night until after midnight, returning home only to fall into bed for about five hours before rising and returning to the Ministry. He stopped Apparating to work, as he was afraid that he was so tired he'd Splinch himself. Instead he'd used the kitchen fire at the Burrow to travel by Floo to one of the many fireplaces in the Ministry's atrium.

He could tell that his mother was worried about him. Even Bill, who had taken a holiday from his job, asked whether he was perhaps pushing himself too hard. Percy finally cracked and told his brother about being hauled in for questioning. Bill wasn't much help. Like Madam Bones, he also looked sceptical when Percy said, with a shaking voice, "Of _course_ the letters are coming from Mr Crouch!" They _had_ to be, they just had to be, else he'd had the most appalling and unforgivable lapse in judgment…

"Well, maybe, Perce, but did you ever think, well, that maybe they _weren't_? I mean, you told me he was having you do some very queer things, and he wouldn't let you visit him at his house."

"That's because he had to sack his house elf!" Percy said quickly, defending Mr Crouch to the last. "He said he was ashamed of the state of affairs around the house, that he'd always been rubbish with cleaning spells. He was embarrassed."

After not actually seeing Mr Crouch for so long Percy was shocked when word came that he'd been seen at _Hogwarts_ , of all places. At first Percy thought Mr Crouch had felt able to attend to his duties as a Tournament judge again, but then he heard the report of Crouch's madness and didn't know what to believe. And on the morning of the Third Task, when he'd been questioning Percy yet again, the Minister had informed him that he would not be permitted to serve as the fifth Tournament judge again that evening; Fudge himself would perform that duty.

Percy finally came to the conclusion that he was in the wrong, that someone _was_ impersonating Mr Crouch, who had evidently fled his captor to go to Hogwarts. During that morning's questioning Percy learned that investigators had found a number of strange potions ingredients in the Crouch home and an odd cabbage-smelling concoction in the scullery.

The really queer thing was that the Crouch family owl seemed to have disappeared utterly. Aurors who'd gone to the Crouch home said there was also evidence of a snake being kept there, though Mr Crouch was not known to be a snake-lover. They'd found an enormous sloughed skin and in the nest where the snake evidently ate and slept they'd found owl feathers.

Which begged the question: How were the impostor's letters being sent to Percy if the Crouch owl had been eaten by a snake? Percy couldn't remember when he'd started receiving the letters by an owl other than Mr Crouch's. It _was_ always the same owl, though, a distinctive all-black one. Percy had rarely seen its like; it was quite handsome. He had simply assumed that Mr Crouch had replaced his rather old owl with a new one. He was an important Ministry official, after all, and had to keep up appearances.

Percy kept one eye on Umbridge as he pulled his hair, which he'd grown long since leaving home, into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. He went to the mantel; throwing Floo powder on the flames, he knelt and thrust his head into the green fire, saying as clearly as his sore throat would allow, "Cornelius Fudge's house."

He felt his head whirling dizzily through the Floo network before arriving at last in the firebox in the Minister's sitting room. He called in a croaky voice, "Hello? Minister? Mr Fudge? Hello? Are you about?" He had no hope, however, that his almost-non-existent voice could be heard in other rooms. No one seemed to be in earshot of the sitting room, not even a house-elf.

He felt a breeze on his back and before he could process what was happening, he was struck by what was unmistakably the chair in which Umbridge had been sitting. She was sitting in it _still_. Percy grunted in pain as the wooden chair with at least twelve stone of angry witch fell onto his back. With all the strength he could muster he pulled his head from the fire, rose, and flung her at the wall, which unfortunately caused the chair to splinter and break apart, rendering the bindings useless.

It was also unfortunate that he'd thrown her at the wall _behind_ his desk, so she was now closer to the drawer containing her wand than he was. They stared at each other and at the desk, both rushing toward it at the same moment.

Umbridge got there first.

She opened the drawer and thrust her hand in; when she pulled it out she was armed once more. He backed toward the door to his office, waiting for her to do something, anything. She continued to point the wand with a shaking hand, her hair askew and the tiny black bow that usually rode on top of her head clinging to some strands around her left ear.

Finally, as Percy put his hand on the doorknob, she pointed the wand at him and again cried, " _Crucio_!"

#/#/#

Tilda and Harry stood by the rail bordering the pier, looking out at the moonlit sea. Harry grinned.

"That was the most fun I've had while not flying. Or watching other people fly," he added, remembering the Quidditch World Cup. "Though you Muggles can come pretty close sometimes. That one ride…" He stopped when he saw her face.

"We should go soon," she said softly, gazing sadly at the ocean.

He didn't respond, looking away from her. Then, abruptly, he said, "Why did you kiss me again? You said you wouldn't."

He turned back to her; she swallowed, eyes still on the sea, and shrugged. "It wasn't as though I felt there was a danger of its escalating here, in public. And no one knows us here."

"Marvin and Brian do. They could have seen us. If they'd been in the right place at the right time."

She turned to him. "I reckon—I reckon it's harder than I thought to just—to not want to—to do certain things with someone I love when he's right here and—" She bit her lip, unable to continue. Turning away from him again, she said, "It's not as though I'm proud of myself."

He put his hand over hers on the rail but she stiffened and pulled hers away, evidently doing a better job of controlling herself. But after a moment she relented and put her hand over his instead, followed by her leaning her head against his shoulder and closing her eyes.

"It's just for a few minutes," she said dreamily. "It's nothing, and no one can blame us for just—this much."

He put his arm around her shoulder and leaned his cheek on her hair, nodding. "Yes. No one can blame us," he whispered, closing his own eyes, savouring her warmth and nearness.

Harry wasn't sure how much time had passed when she pulled away and wiped tears from her cheeks. She whispered, "I'm sorry, Harry. So sorry. If you only knew…"

He nodded, resigned. "It's okay. It's getting late; we should probably go," he said, echoing her earlier sentiment.

"Do you—do you promise to forgive me? Some day?"

 _You'd think she'd murdered someone._ "Yeah, of course. When I can fit into all of my trousers properly again."

She dropped her jaw and hit his arm. "Harry! I didn't know you could be so naughty!"

He grinned. "That's because you decided that we couldn't, erm, you know…"

She put her hands on her hips. "Oh, really? Would that be _real_ naughtiness then, or are you only a legend in your own mind?"

He gave her a half smile, saying, "Well, actually—that second thing. I probably would have been rubbish anyway, since I don't know anything."

She laughed. "I thought that's why you wanted to be with an experienced older woman."

He swallowed, unable to take his eyes from her face and the way it was limned by the moonlight. "No. That was because I fell in love." She froze, clearly unprepared for his sudden seriousness. Harry felt like his heart had stopped; he couldn't bear the way she was looking at him. Sad and loving at the same time. He forced his face into a false grin. "But it's your loss. You'll never know how naughty I can be now."

She nodded, still solemn. "Yeah," she agreed softly. "My loss."

When she reached for his hand he let her take it and lead him from the pier, back to the car. They climbed in silently. After they closed their doors and he was taking his Cloak out, Tilda surprised him by suddenly turning to him, sliding her arms around his neck and pulling his mouth to hers. He let himself be led, feeling her tongue asking for admittance and slowly accepting it. He tried to quell his surprise, as she had not been this aggressive before, even though it was a very gentle aggression. When she pulled back and kissed both of his cheeks affectionately he watched her face. She was crying again.

Tilda turned from him, starting the car as he put the Cloak on with shaking hands. "That really was the last time," she said softly.

She clung to the steering wheel in a death-grip and did not speak again until after they'd reached Greater Whinging.

#/#/#

" _Crucio!_ "

With a _bang!_ the wand Umbridge wielded suddenly became a limp haddock, complete with a three-day-old smell. Percy felt like punching the air in triumph.

 _Thank you very much, Fred and George,_ he thought, grinning. Umbridge stared in horror at the thing in her hand. "Accio fake wand!" Percy cried in a hoarse whisper; it flew across the room to him. He shook it out and with a _crack!_ it appeared to be a wand again. He tossed it onto his desk, pointed his wand at her and said softly, " _Petrificus Totalus_!"

She had been flabbergasted at the wand turning out to be fake; now she stiffened all over, falling backward, lodging against the wall behind his desk at an awkward angle. He used a quick _Reparo_ charm on the broken chair and levitated her body so it leaned against the chair. He removed a small vial from his robe pocket; it was protected inside another vial. He put only a few drops of perfectly clear liquid in the corner of her mouth and returned the vials to his pocket. In two quick swishes of his wand he took the full-body bind off her and bound her to the chair again, followed by a quick spell that glued the chair's legs to the floor.

Pointing at his throat, he said quietly, " _Sonorus_." He cleared his throat and looked at her, saying, "Now then," in something close to a normal voice. "Let the interrogation begin."

He wasn't certain how soon the Veritaserum would take effect but he knew that the potion Dumbledore had given him was brewed by Snape and was the strongest in Britain. She glared at him, her mouth clamped shut belligerently.

"How long have you been a Death Eater?" he demanded.

She swallowed, her eyes looking a little glazed-over. She answered automatically, "I joined their glorious ranks not long before he mysteriously disappeared almost fifteen years ago, but the Ministry never found out and never charged me, as I hadn't done anything to warrant being charged. I had precious little chance to serve him before he was snatched away from us. And then I had no choice but to blend in with other Ministry officials as though I didn't care that the only hope of our world was _gone._ " Despite her altered state she still spoke in the incongruously high-pitched voice.

"I have _always_ supported the cause of the pureblood, something a blood traitor like _you_ could never understand," she continued. "Then Ludo was told by an old associate of his that it was possible to restore the Dark Lord to his former strength and power, but he would need help…"

"Ludo—Ludo _Bagman_?" Percy gasped. "When was this?"

"Two years ago. He never had any gold—always gambling—so I gave him some money to give to his friend to go to Albania and look for the Dark Lord. We didn't actually expect him to be successful, and Ludo was busy preparing for the Triwizard Tournament, so he sent Bertha Jorkins to Albania on holiday to see whether she could find out what had become of him. She thought it was all her idea to go on holiday there. Later, Ludo contacted me to say that his friend _was_ bringing the Dark Lord back here and Bertha was dead. She knew too much. That was why Ludo didn't do anything about looking for her for such a long time. I only knew his friend by an alias; I have since met him, as he helped to resurrect the Dark Lord, but I still do not know his true name."

"I do," Percy said, his voice growing louder and harder. He removed the spell from his throat and cleared it again, feeling like he no longer needed help to be heard. "His name is Peter Pettigrew."

"I know I've heard that name," she mused, her voice soft and high.

"Since you have no choice but to speak the truth, I know you've heard it. Everyone thought him dead for twelve years. He was supposedly blown up by Sirius Black when Black killed a street full of Muggles. Except that he did neither of those things; Pettigrew faked his own death by cutting off a finger, blowing up the street to create confusion, and changed into a rat to make his getaway. He is an illegal Animagus. You may know him by the name _Wormtail_."

She looked unsurprised. "Wormtail. Yes, that is what the Dark Lord calls him. _That_ is this Peter Pettigrew?"

Percy would not look at her. "Yes. He betrayed Harry Potter's parents and led You-Know-Who to them." _And after he framed Sirius Black for it he hid out as a little boy's pet rat._ Percy broke into coughing again. _My pet rat_ , he thought. _For years that traitor lived in my house, in my care._ By the time he'd given him to Ron he'd had him for over nine years, which was about three times longer than a common-or-garden rat _should_ live. It had never occurred to him that this was the least bit unusual, though it should have. And then he stupidly gave him to his brother, to Harry Potter's _best friend._

#/#/#

Percy remembered the summer that Ron came home with a very small, twittery owl instead of Scabbers. And while Percy had known that Scabbers would probably die _one_ day, he hadn't been prepared for the reality of it. It wasn't as though his mother hadn't _tried_ to prepare him. Every six months since Percy was nine years old, when the rat would occasionally sneeze or seem peaky, his mother would say, "Now, Love, don't fret over him too much. Rats don't live very long, see. You need to prepare yourself—eventually."

He hadn't even _wanted_ to give him to Ron, but his mother had insisted on giving Hermes to Percy for his prefect's gift at the beginning of his fifth year, which had floored him in its generosity. She then reminded him that they couldn't _also_ afford to get Ron a new pet, so Ron should have Scabbers, who was already familiar with him. Percy hadn't even tried to argue that he deserved to have two pets and Ron none; it would have been ungenerous. He let Ron have the rat and pretended that he thought he was well shot of him, though he missed him a great deal. An owl was useful, but Hermes wasn't the same as the furry little companion he'd had since the age of five.

That was the year Ron was nearly killed by McGonagall's enchanted chess set and Harry was almost killed by _Professor Quirrell_ , of all people. When Percy heard he didn't want to believe it. How could he not have noticed that their Defence against the Dark Arts professor was a dark wizard? _And_ he hadn't kept an eye on his little brother or his brother's friends and prevented them from getting into trouble. Some prefect he was!

Then, even worse, the second year he was a prefect, his own sister had been writing in an enchanted diary. He knew nothing of that when his world came crumbling down around him because his girlfriend, Penelope, was Petrified by the mysterious beast that had been released from the Chamber of Secrets. And then Ginny was taken into the Chamber and assumed dead…

He'd locked himself in his dormitory, unable to face his parents, positive they would blame him for failing Ginny, who had come to him, tried to talk to him, but she'd done it by following him down to the dungeons, where he was meeting Penny, and it was far more important to him that she not tell anyone about _that_. He'd never given her the chance to tell him what was bothering her, he'd been too caught up in his own concerns and making sure she didn't tell anyone about _his_ rule-breaking. Percy Weasley wasn't _supposed_ to break rules. Or at least he wasn't supposed to get _caught_. He'd felt deeply ashamed, worried about what his mother would say if she found out about the _particular_ rule that he, a prefect, had broken. And after Ginny's being influenced by the diary had come to light he was certain that Dumbledore would take away his prefect badge, even _without_ knowing about what he and Penny had been up to. He'd failed as a brother and as a prefect yet again.

But Dumbledore made him Head Boy. When he'd received the letter, Percy had considered sending the badge back, telling the headmaster he had the wrong man for the job, that if he were Head Boy the castle would probably be a pile of rubble by June. But his mother had been reading the letter over his shoulder and started shrieking with glee, and he had to pretend to be pleased. His mother was proud of him, no longer giving him those _looks_ he'd received after Ron had returned from his first two years of school and Ginny from her first. He wasn't a failure anymore; he was to be Head Boy, like Bill. He tried to sound confident about it and ended up getting nothing but grief from the twins. He envied them unspeakably; no one was relying on _them_ for anything. If they came home from school without getting expelled they were exceeding their parents' wildest expectations. They hadn't even bothered to _show up_ for some of their OWL exams and ended up with only three each. He'd practically killed himself to get twelve.

Like Bill.

And then, on his watch, Sirius Black got into the castle and tried to murder Ron.

He'd tried to keep his chin up that night, to patrol the castle with the staff and other prefects, to never show to Dumbledore how dreadful he felt. _A murderous madman not only got into the castle but into Gryffindor Tower and into my brother's dormitory._ He couldn't stop thinking about it. _My fault_ , his brain kept screaming. _All my fault._ And even when it came to light that Neville Longbottom had written down the passwords, Percy remembered the brave way Neville raised his hand and took the blame from stern Professor McGonagall. Percy doubted that Neville would say, "Well, you see, Percy said that perhaps I should make a list, since I kept forgetting…"

It was only because Dumbledore was owed a favour by the Minister for Magic that the Minister had suggested to Mr Crouch that Percy would do to fill the job opening in his department. Working in International Magical Co-operation wasn't Percy's dream job, but he threw himself into it whole-heartedly. Nothing was going to stop him from doing a good job _this_ time. He would rise through the ranks at the Ministry with Hogwarts far behind him. He could stop having nightmares about everyone finding out what a fraud and a failure he was.

He would never have to see _that look_ on his mother's face again. Never, ever again.

Or so he had thought.

#/#/#

"You knew that You-Know-Who was back on the night of the Third Task of the Triwizard Tournament, didn't you?"

Umbridge looked at him with a glassy stare. "Yes."

"Were you there? In the circle?"

"Yes. But he did not address me. I had never had the chance to really serve him when I was younger. But that was to change."

He was facing away from her, which made him focus on her voice. Something occurred to him; he closed his eyes so he would have absolutely no distractions and said, "Repeat after me: _Why are you defending Muggles, you blood traitor?_ "

There was silence.

"Say it!"

"I need only say the truth," she said, sounding slightly more alert. He wondered whether the potion was wearing off. "You cannot make me do anything else."

He pointed his wand in her direction, still with his eyes closed. "Do you want to see how good my aim is with a Reductor Curse when my eyes are closed? I can aim for the desk but if I'm a bit off I could end up hitting— _something else_."

" _Why are you defending Muggles, you blood-traitor_ ," she said quickly, not inflecting it like a question.

It was enough. Percy opened his eyes and turned to her. "It was _you_?"

"Yes." She understood the question completely and answered truthfully.

"You were the one who cursed my brothers and then me during the riot at the World Cup. You cut Bill's arm and tried to hurt Charlie, too. And you sent that rock flying at me. Gave me a bloody nose." He winced at the memory. "Why?"

"I was trying for your father, but when I saw the chance to get _three_ Weasleys I went for it." She looked like she hadn't meant to say this, clamping her mouth shut afterward.

 _Is she somehow fighting the potion?_ he wondered. "You were wearing a mask but I _remember that voice,_ " he hissed at her. "The mask muffled it but that wasn't enough. You were one of them and Lucius Malfoy was your ringleader."

"Lucius Malfoy was at the World Cup at the Minister's invitation, because of his recent very generous contribution to St Mungo's," she said, sounding like a Ministry of Magic press release.

"Which you knew would get him into the Minister's good graces. _You_ told Malfoy to do it."

"Yes."

"You'd been coaching him on how to please the Minister for _years_."

"Yes."

"You vouched for him repeatedly, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"You haven't even needed to put Imperius on the Minister because he listens to everything you say anyway, isn't that right?"

"Yes."

He had never wanted so much in his life to commit murder. "And my father? Who is well-known as a Muggle-lover? You spread stories that made him sound like a flaming crackpot, didn't you?"

"Making your father look like a flaming crackpot is hardly a difficult job."

He ignored her response. "Kept him from being promoted or from getting rises in salary, yeah? Not a single bloody rise for _eight years_!" he growled, collapsing against his desk in a coughing fit. She had a triumphant gleam in her eye. The potion had worn off; he was sure of it. But it did not seem necessary now; she was taking delight in telling him these things, glorying in what she had done. She was _bragging_.

"I am _quite_ proud to say yes to all of those charges," she said, her high voice lilting with glee. "And as long as you're asking _me_ so many questions, would you mind if I ask you _one_?"

He tried to keep his breathing steady, tried to maintain his equilibrium. _I must not fail, I must not fail_ …

"What?" he finally responded, trying to keep a shake out of his voice.

"Just when, pray tell, did you become Dumbledore's lap dog?"

" _Ah, Mr Weasley. Working hard, I see."_

 _Percy stared at the head of Albus Dumbledore in the green flames. He nodded dumbly at first, too tired for niceties, before he remembered himself and said, "How are you this evening, Professor?" with an audible strain in his voice. "Is the Tournament over already?"_

 _Dumbledore sighed, not answering the question about the Triwizard Tournament. "I've been better. I do hope I can impose upon you to meet with me. I cannot talk here for very long; the Ministry are not monitoring the Floo network yet, but I expect that they will be very shortly, especially in offices where Weasley-friendly employees are working."_

 _Percy frowned; even though he was rather sleep-deprived from working late after being interrogated all day he did not think Dumbledore would make more sense to him if he'd just awoken from a good eight hours. "I don't understand, sir."_

" _I have a very important job for you, Percy," he said, his face very grave. "A very dangerous job. And you are the only person I can ask to do it. Please meet me in an hour's time in a room at the Leaky Cauldron. Tom will tell you which one. We can talk more then."_

"I'm no one's lap dog," he whispered angrily.

She laughed in a highly annoying titter. "Oh, but you play the role _so well_. You really _bit into_ the character of lackey-to-the-Minister. I do believe Cornelius probably _still_ believes you are on the outs with your family."

Percy shook with nerves, hoping it wasn't visible to Umbridge. _She knows everything,_ he thought in a panic. Absolutely _everything_. What was he going to do?

 _Percy sat back in the armchair by the fire in the private room at the Leaky Cauldron where Dumbledore had asked to meet him. His brain felt full after hearing of everything Harry had told Dumbledore about You-Know-Who returning, plus the confession of Barty Crouch, Jr. It didn't seem possible. Mr Crouch's son, who had not died in Azkaban, had killed his father and had his soul sucked out by a Dementor because of Fudge. You-Know-Who was back. Harry had duelled with him and returned to Hogwarts with Cedric Diggory's body._

 _Dumbledore explained to him what the Order of the Phoenix was, and that his eldest brother and parents would be working for him as members of the Order. Percy immediately sat up in his chair, eager._

" _And you want me to be a member of the Order too, sir? Of course! Of course I'll do anythin—" He faltered suddenly, sinking back into his chair while Dumbledore frowned at him from his chair on the opposite side of the fire._

" _What is wrong, Percy?"_

 _He frowned, gazing into the flames, thinking of his many failures in the previous year, plus the years before that. "It's just—yeah, I'm willing. But I've always been willing, and where has it got me? If I'd spoken up about Mr Crouch, maybe You-Know-Who wouldn't be back. While I was Head Boy, Sirius Black got into the castle and nearly killed my brother…"_

 _Dumbledore smiled kindly at him. "We all make mistakes, Mr Weasley. I myself was entirely fooled by young Mr Crouch until this very evening. For months I had no reason to believe that the real Alastor Moody was not teaching at Hogwarts. As for Sirius Black getting into the castle, well, that may not be as great a problem as you would think."_

 _And then the truly shocking revelations: Sirius Black was innocent, he'd been framed by Peter Pettigrew, the true traitor, who wasn't dead and who had helped Mr Crouch's son bring back You-Know-Who. He told Percy that he had in fact known Peter for years as his pet rat, Scabbers. Percy could hardly take it all in._

" _When Ron didn't bring him home I—I thought he had died! And—and Sirius Black is Harry's godfather?" he breathed, incredulous._

" _Yes. And another member of the Order of the Phoenix. He's gone to contact our old friends to let them know that their services will once again be needed. But we cannot do this with the old members of the Order alone. We shall need youthful energy. In some very particular places. That is where you come in, Mr Weasley."_

 _Percy shook his head again. "I don't know. Don't get me wrong—I believe you and want to help, but I have this horrid feeling that I'd just bollix up everything again. You want Bill, not me. Bill never makes mistakes. Bill's ruddy perfect," he said, an unmistakable edge to his voice as he rose and rested his brow on the mantelpiece, feeling the flames' heat on his face._

 _He glanced briefly at Dumbledore, who looked shrewdly at him, his eyes twinkling over the tops of his half-moon spectacles. Percy turned to the fire again. "I will not bore you with more stories of the many mistakes I have made in my life, Mr Weasley, but believe, me, I have made them. And also believe me when I say that I have a job for you that absolutely no one else can fill. But it will require some sacrifice on your part."_

 _Percy eyed him again, swallowing. Perhaps if he did this well he could finally stop feeling like an utter failure. Perhaps he could hold his head up again, or even get Penelope back. They'd had a row in February, before he'd gone up to Hogwarts to be one of the judges for the Second Task. She'd tried to talk sense into him, she had. Something was definitely wrong with Mr Crouch, she'd said. He should tell someone at the Ministry about it, she said._

 _But he hadn't done that. And Penny had told him that when he decided that he wanted to spend more time with her than at his job to let her know. She didn't understand. She didn't know what it was to feel like the entire world would learn the truth at any moment, that Percy Ignatius Weasley was the worst sort of poser and fraud. He felt like he had to run constantly just to stay in one place when it came to his job. And it still wasn't enough._

 _But thinking about the Second Task of the Tournament reminded him of something else. "I'm willing to make sacrifices, but not to sacrifice my family," he told Dumbledore, remembering the cold of the lake when he'd gone to haul Ron back to the shore. When Dumbledore had briefed the judges on the task and told them the identities of each champion's hostage Percy's stomach had dropped into his shoes._

 _Ron._

 _Ron was in the lake and Harry had to get him out. Under the circumstances he'd felt he had every right to bark at Harry when he showed up at the lakeside only moments before the Task was to begin. His brother was down there! The hardest thing he'd ever had to do was to sit and pretend to be calm for an hour while waiting for the champions to return with the hostages. First Cedric Diggory had emerged from the lake with Cho Chang, then Viktor Krum with Hermione Granger. The waiting was interminable. Finally, the French girl emerged on the far side of the lake, crying for help. She'd been unable to get to her sister and didn't know what to do. And still Harry had not returned with Ron._

 _When he finally appeared with both Ron and the little blonde girl, Percy had been unable to contain himself any longer, sloshing into the water, mindless of dignity, of decorum. No one understood that more than anything he was angry with_ himself _. When Mr Crouch and Ludo Bagman were planning the Tournament_ he _had suggested the champions going into the lake to retrieve hostages._

 _It had been all his idea._

 _He had never dreamed that his own brother would be in the lake. Percy had also suggested the age restriction, which he had thought would protect his brothers and sister from attempting anything foolhardy. But it hadn't worked; a dead man had thwarted them all._

" _Can I ask one more thing?" he'd said to Dumbledore_

" _Of course."_

" _Why me?"_

"Yes, Weasley, you fooled Cornelius completely," Umbridge said. "And you fooled me at first, I must admit. You were very convincing. The problem with Cornelius is that when you tell him exactly what he wants to hear he doesn't question it. Or it is the beauty of Cornelius, depending on how you look at it. And you managed to tell him absolutely everything he wanted to hear. It was quite perfect. _Too_ perfect. I should have seen through it from the start," she said, glaring at him.

" _Ah, Minister, so sorry that you're seeing my office in such disarray," Percy said hastily, waving his wand to create neat piles of curling parchment. "The owls just won't stop coming. I've tried responding to them, but it's becoming rather tiresome to keep writing out, 'No, of course You-Know-Who isn't back, your child is safe at Hogwarts, Cedric Diggory was killed in a magical accident, which is a danger in such a tournament, although we were trying to minimise the danger this time around, blah blah blah.'" He sighed. "Of course, I don't know any such thing, but one has to go through the motions. I should just make two hundred or so copies of the letter I've been writing and have done with it, send it to every family with a child at Hogwarts."_

 _Fudge raised his eyebrows at Percy. "What don't you know?"_

" _That the students are safe at Hogwarts. I mean, look who's running the place! Dumbledore actually seems to believe You-Know-Who is back! I mean, when I was Head Boy I thought of him as eccentric, but this…"_

 _As Percy shook his head he noticed that Fudge had brightened considerably. "Really? You think he's—dangerous?"_

" _I'm sorry Minister. I know he's your friend. No, of course not, I never meant to imply—"_

 _Fudge beamed, patting his shoulder with an avuncular bonhomie he'd never previously shown toward Percy. "Don't worry about it, lad. You can speak freely to me. My lips are sealed. What did you really want to say?"_

" _Well, I mean—look at what happened last year! Sirius Black got into the castle. Did you know he nearly killed my youngest brother? Poor Ron woke up and there was a madman standing over him with a knife! I ask you! And the year before that the school nearly had to be shut down. My sister and brother could have been killed and my girlfriend was Petrified," he added, to make it more personal._

 _Fudge nodded. "So you know."_

 _Percy looked at him with his lips drawn into a straight line. "I don't want to speak ill of Dumbledore, but I think it's possible that he's lost touch, sir. And on top of everything else that happened last year, it turned out that we were being taught by a werewolf!" He quivered with indignation. "If I'd known that I'd have led a walk-out by the students!"_

 _Fudge nodded, commiserating. "Yes, it can be disillusioning to find that someone in whom you placed your trust has feet of clay. But it is part of growing up…"_

 _Percy snorted. "Tell that to my dad. He believes Dumbledore! I asked him what proof there is that You-Know-Who is back and he said that Harry said he saw him. As though that settles it! I mean, right, no one knows why You-Know-Who couldn't kill him when he was a baby, but lately I think Harry's gone a bit off too, you know? Goes on about his scar hurting him, faints all over the place. He almost missed the Second Task of the Tournament! And did you know he's—" He lowered his voice. "He's a Parselmouth?"_

 _Fudge nodded conspiratorially. "So I've heard. Hm. Are you saying that you and your father aren't seeing eye to eye?"_

 _Percy shook his head miserably. "No, and I never realised before how difficult it is to live in that house if you don't agree with every word that comes out of my dad's mouth. I always thought it was my mum who shouldn't be crossed. Not that she disagrees with Dad on this." He sighed again. "I'd move out but I'm not really making enough to afford a flat and I'm probably going to lose my job here anyway as soon as they get someone to replace Mr Crouch. The new bloke will probably want to hand-pick his own assistant." He gave Fudge a horrified look. "Oh, great Merlin! That's why you're here. That's why you came. To give me the sack."_

" _No, no, I didn't mean to alarm you," Fudge said quickly, reassuring him. "I was just, erm, making the rounds of the various departments to ascertain that others, like you, understand that the Ministry is firmly convinced that Diggory's death was an accident, that You-Know-Who is not back and that everything is business as usual," he said briskly, clapping his hands together._

 _Percy let out a relieved breath. "Oh, thank Merlin. I mean, I really should have noticed that something was wrong with Mr Crouch, like you said, and I thought for sure I was getting the sack. But in my defence," he said quickly, "I was just—just being loyal to my head of department. It didn't seem right for me, of all people, to question Mr Crouch's competence. I've always looked up to him. He speaks so many languages, and he's always been unswervingly loyal to the Ministry. He even put his own son in prison when it was warranted."_

 _Fudge nodded. "Yes, yes. You know, I may have been entirely too hard on you. You're quite right; you were just being loyal. That is hardly a failing. In fact, it is a quality that I highly prize in all of the people who work most closely with me."_

 _Percy stared at him. "I'm—I'm not sure what you're saying, Minister," he said, his voice shaking. Fudge scrutinised him for a long minute._

" _What I'm saying is this: How would you like to come work for me?"_

 _Percy tried to look shocked, but underneath the façade he thought:_

 _It worked. He bought it._

 _I'm in._

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	16. Confrontation

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Sixteen**

 **Confrontation**

 **#/#/#**

"What was that?" Ron's voice echoed in the quiet drawing room of number twelve, Grimmauld Place. Until he had spoken only the turning of pages and the scratching of Hermione's quill in her notebook had broken the silence for the better part of an hour. They had been discussing Harry for a little while but couldn't bear to continue, not knowing what was happening in Little Whinging.

"What was what?" Hermione responded, still reading.

From the front hall came the sound of the locks on the front door being secured one after the other. Ron threw down the Quidditch magazine he'd been reading. He'd had enough revision for one day.

"That. Don't you hear it?" He sat on the edge of his chair, poised to spring at the door.

Hermione also sat up, her face glowing with excitement. The thick spellbook she'd been reading slipped forgotten to the floor as she dashed across the room, saying, "They're back! They've brought Harry back!"

Despite her head start Ron beat her to the door and flung it open, crying, " _Harry_!"

They stopped short, seeing immediately that the dingy front hall was utterly empty, lit only dimly by the flickering serpent-shaped gas lamps high on the walls. Though uninhabited, the hall was not silent. Ron's shouting had not gone unnoticed by Mrs Black, who launched into her usual tirade. Ron ignored her, looking about the hall with a frown. "But—but—"

Hermione also examined the hall, trying to ignore the various anti-Muggle-born epithets Mrs Black was screeching. "Are you _sure_ you heard something?"

"Yes! The front door opened and closed again and the locks were clicking." Ron's face was quite red. Suddenly he stopped, having had a revelation, and he could tell as he looked at Hermione in horror that she had had the same thought.

"Maybe it wasn't someone coming in," Hermione whispered. "Maybe—maybe it was someone—"

"—someone going out," Ron finished for her, nodding. He lunged at the handle to the front door, but it was magically locked again and he didn't know how to reverse it. Hermione shook her head in exasperation.

"Don't be rash. We should check the house first. Then if we think she's run off we'll tell someone. Kitchen first, I think."

Mrs Black's voice continued to echo through the entrance hall, setting off the other portraits, who were also screaming and holding their hands over their painted ears. Ron ignored the racket, running down the hall toward the kitchen.

" _Ginny! Ginny!_ " As he passed Mrs Black she stopped shouting and the other portraits settled down as well. He parted the curtains briefly. "What's the matter?" he asked her snidely. "Worried that I'll kiss you again?"

Ron left the portrait and started to open the door to the kitchen stairs when Ginny flung it open, her hair a wild cloud around her head. "What? What is it? Is there news?" she said breathlessly. Ron suddenly flung his arms around her, but Ginny shook him off impatiently. "What's the matter with you?" she grumbled.

Ron let her push him away. "It's just—we thought—"

Ginny eyed Hermione. "We thought you'd left the house, Ginny. To—to go to Surrey," Hermione said quietly.

Pointing at her flushed and worried face, Ron said accusingly, "I _knew_ you weren't _really_ over Harry. Dean Thomas! I ask you!" he said indignantly.

Ginny looked daggers at him. "Stop trying to throw Harry at me, Ron. I came running up here because I'm concerned about him as a _friend_. Not to mention I'm concerned about everyone in the Order who went, and Professor Dumbledore. And while you're at it, stop talking about Dean that way!"

"You were very anxious there for a second, asking for news of someone you think of as only a _friend_ ," Ron said, raising his eyebrows meaningfully, ignoring what she'd said about the Order and Dumbledore. "Not to mention I think you _would_ have gone to Surrey if you thought you could help."

Ginny crossed her arms and glared at him. "How stupid do you think I am? Not to mention, it would be like the Ministry of Magic all over again, wouldn't it? As it is the Order has Harry's safety to worry about. They don't need the likes of me running around Surrey attracting trouble. And how would I get there without doing magic or being seen flying a broom?"

"The Knight Bus," Hermione and Ron said automatically, in unison; they both coloured immediately. Ginny didn't look so stern when she heard that.

"You thought I'd gone because you'd considered it yourselves, hadn't you?" She looked sympathetically at them.

Hermione nodded. "Yes, but it was just talk. Especially as we don't even know how to unlock the door. We needed to spout nonsense about what we'd do if we _were_ going. The Knight Bus seemed like the most logical way."

"Why did you think I'd gone out, again?" Ginny said, frowning. All three of them looked toward the front door.

"Ron thought he heard someone open and close it. And Mrs Black went off again. No, wait, that was after we started shouting. I suppose it could have been something else. Could have been anything. We're a bit tense and jumpy right now," Hermione conceded. Ron glared at her, obviously still convinced that he'd heard the door. Ginny smiled wickedly.

"You need to relax. A little snogging might be in order," she said mischievously.

While Ron looked heartened at that, Hermione turned a deep red.

#/#/#

"What tipped you off, other than my being too _perfect_?" Percy really did want to know; he had no hope of continuing to spy on the Minister, not unless he was prepared to kill Umbridge or torture her into insanity. Or—

Put a Memory Charm on her.

 _Obliviation_ , Percy thought. It could work. Umbridge might forget that she ever suspected him. The problem was, with whom, if anyone, had she shared her suspicions about him? Had she written this in a journal? What precautions had she taken against a contingency like this?

"What tipped me off? Well, it wasn't one thing, to tell the truth." Umbridge laughed for a second. It was still a very annoying sound. "But I think the first thing I noticed was that _Dumbledore was at Potter's hearing._ "

Percy swallowed. "Yes? He was scheduled to be a witness."

"For a hearing occurring much later in the day. I _watched_ you send the owls to all the members of the court. I dictated the original letter to you, saying that the time and venue for the hearing were being changed and all participants had been informed. Which they hadn't, of course, until ten minutes before the hearing when you sent the owls to your father and to Dumbledore, informing them of the change. And yet Dumbledore _still_ showed up," she snarled. "How, I wonder?" she said, switching to a sing-song. "How on earth did he know to come to the Ministry _three hours earlier_ than he originally planned, when he said that he _never got our owl_?"

Percy looked her in the eye. He was tired of hiding, tired of pretending. He nodded. "Yes. I told him that morning. After the Minister informed me that the members of the court would have to be contacted I excused myself to go to the loo. Dumbledore probably got my message _before_ any members of the court had been informed of the change." His voice was very hard and he fought against going into another coughing fit. Then he smiled at her, but it wasn't a friendly smile. "You should have seen your face when he walked into the courtroom. Not that it was probably easy for _Harry_ to see your face, sitting back in the shadows. Were you worried Harry would recognise you from the graveyard where You-Know-Who was resurrected?"

She bristled. "I did worry about that at first," she said reluctantly. "Then I remembered that I'd been wearing a mask and needn't worry."

"And of course the reason we were there was that you had sent Dementors after Harry. How convenient it is to work for the Ministry _and_ You-Know-Who at the same time. You-Know-Who tells you that Harry is protected by an ancient magic and you work out the one thing that won't be affected by that protection: Dementors. And you just _happen_ to have Dementors at your disposal." He had to restrain himself from hexing her. He wondered whether Dumbledore would think it very distasteful to simply imprison her in one of the dungeons at Hogwarts. But again, he needed to learn who else knew about his being an agent for Dumbledore. Or whether she'd written this down.

"Who did you tell about this?"

"About you contacting Dumbledore to get him to the hearing? No one. I wasn't even certain that it was you at first. I worked my way through most of the court, dropping hints and asking probing questions before it all started to point to you, the most logical choice. And I didn't even know for certain that you hadn't had the best of intentions by telling Dumbledore to come early. Mind you, I had told you only to inform the members of the court, but still. Potter did not receive his notification until just before eight. You didn't go out of your way to contact _him_. I suspected you but did not feel I had anything—conclusive."

Percy gave Umbridge more Veritaserum and she gazed at him with a glassy look to her eyes once again. He didn't want to risk being taken in by lies. "I didn't put it all together until I returned from Hogwarts," she said dreamily. "But the more I thought about it the more it fit. There was the way you did your job for Cornelius, plus volunteering to do so many things for me, as well. Volunteering to take notes for us, though we could have used a Quick-Quotes Quill. Being _so concerned_ about Willy Widdershins's legal difficulties when he told us about Potter's meeting with his friends at the Hog's Head. Being so willing to draught my educational decrees. But what really made me wonder was that Prophet article."

"Which article?" he asked. There were so many to choose from.

"The one in which Lucius Malfoy was quoted, and you, as well. You wrote it, of course, as the Minister told you to. The Minister _loved_ your articles. He told me we were fortunate to have you; you could have gone to work for the _Prophet_. If you only knew the praise he heaped on you when you weren't around! But somehow I knew you had to be too good to be true." Percy flinched; sometimes hearing the unvarnished truth was less than enjoyable. He regretted, for a moment, having given her more of the potion. She continued in the high, sing-song voice, "No one could be _that_ perfect for a job when they'd made such a ruddy mess of their first one."

" _Why me?"_

 _Dumbledore nodded, clearly expecting this. "Now, I do not want you to take this the wrong way, Percy, but it seems quite possible that you will not be in your present position at the Ministry for much longer. I wish to prevent your leaving the employ of the Ministry altogether. Although there are members of the Order in other departments besides your father's, none are in a position or doing work that would enable them to inform me of truly important decisions being made by the Minister before they are acted upon."_

 _Percy dropped his jaw. "You want me to—I mean, excuse my language, sir, but after the bleeding cock-up I managed in my first job, what makes you think the Minister for Magic himself would want to hire me?"_

 _The edge of Dumbledore's mouth turned up as he said ruefully, "I think that someone expressing opinions that are the same as the Minister's would have an excellent chance of being offered a position very close to him. Cornelius is distressingly predictable, but this can work to our advantage. You must, of course, not appear to be fishing for a promotion. You must not even give away that you are aware of any rift between me and the Minister. I need someone who is an unknown quantity to the Minister except in one regard: loyalty. He has been interrogating you regarding the affair of Mr Crouch. And he knows that you have been loyal to a fault. He will find that very, very attractive. And any negative opinions that you may express about me, doubly so."_

" _But—but—" Percy sputtered. "But he knows how my dad thinks, and that he's friends with you. Even if he did offer me a position, how do I know he wouldn't try to use me to spy on my family against my will? I could be putting all of them at risk!"_

 _Dumbledore nodded. "You see, Percy? You're not as bad at this as you think you are. I've already thought of that. The greatest sacrifice you will need to make, if you accept my offer, would be to make a very public break with your family. Everyone must believe that you are no longer on good terms with any of them, and with me as well. Cornelius is far more likely to confide in you if he believes you will not be carrying anything home to the Burrow. For this to be effective I must insist that you not tell the truth of your situation to anyone at all. Not even your girlfriend."_

 _Percy grimaced and mumbled, "Well, as she hasn't spoken to me in about four months that shouldn't be a problem."_

 _Dumbledore did not acknowledge that he had spoken. "In turn I will not reveal your identity to the other members of the Order. You will give information gathered to me and me alone. I will tell you the names of other Order members, of course, for it is possible that, from time to time, some of us will, erm, attract a bit of trouble. I wish to have someone close to the Minister who knows whether a newly detained prisoner, for instance, is working for me. Cornelius has shown an alarming tendency to bring in Dementors first and ask questions later. However—you are not to do anything to assist members of the Order unless I ask you to. I do not want to draw unnecessary attention to you. If you hear of a member of the Order who is in a spot of trouble I would like to know as quickly as possible, however, so that I may decide on a course of action, if there is to be one. And unfortunately, I cannot give you a written list of names. But I can put the names directly into your memory, so that you can access it at any time. That will have to do. We cannot afford to have anything lying about in writing. Codes can be broken, as well as concealment spells."_

" _You mean—I couldn't tell my mum and dad? I'd have to let them think I hate them?" His voice shook; he couldn't imagine being on the outs with his mum. The only time he could remember her being cross with him was when he'd suggested that his father had erred in speaking to Rita Skeeter about the riot at the World Cup. The thought of that being the rule and not the exception was bone-chilling._

 _Dumbledore seemed to consider this carefully. "Your parents. Hm. Well, that may be wise, actually, to have them know what you are up to, at least in the abstract. That way we may be assured that they will not waste their time—and yours—trying to extend the olive branch repeatedly. And if your siblings follow their example and regard you as_ persona non grata, _that should take care of that problem as well. I trust Molly and Arthur to keep this to themselves. But you must not make any contact with them, even if you are having difficulty communicating with me. I am the only person to whom you will give information."_

 _Percy breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, sir." Then he realised that his last barrier had been removed; he was going to do this, he really was. It was important work and, as Dumbledore said, there was no one else who could do it. He stood up straight and nodded at his former headmaster, saying formally, "I accept your offer to be a member of the Order of the Phoenix."_

#/#/#

Percy vividly remembered the article Umbridge was talking about. Not only had he taken great pains over it, he'd also worked long and hard to put all of the pertinent information from the article into the letter he'd written to Ron, a letter he'd carefully sent in the middle of the night, to avoid the owl-checks at Hogwarts. It had been Dumbledore's idea to write the letter, since he otherwise wasn't to have contact with his family. Dumbledore had been avoiding Harry's presence for reasons he did not reveal to Percy, but he wanted Harry to know about the things that were going to be in the article the following day, and he also wanted to ensure that Ron and Hermione would remain Harry's staunch allies. The best way to do that was for Percy to tell Ron to stay away from Harry. "If I tell him to do something," Percy had said sadly, "you can count on his doing the opposite." Dumbledore had agreed.

"I assume you thought you were clever," Umbridge said to him, "to give away so much information in the article. I do not remember the Minister _authorising_ the release of that information. But thanks to you everyone knew we were attempting to gain control of Hogwarts, everyone knew that Cornelius had appointed me, not Dumbledore. Everyone knew I was to be High Inquisitor. Including Malfoy's quote was a masterstroke, I must admit, and I take it that the 'Ministry insider' was actually _you_?" Percy nodded, trying not to smirk. "And, of course, you mentioned Marchbanks and Ogden resigning their posts on the court in protest. That way anyone who agreed with them knew where they stood. Clever, very clever."

"You forgot the part about including Madam Marchbanks' links to subversive goblin groups," he said, feeling unaccountably hurt that she'd neglected this. "But what I still want to know most is— _who else knows about me_?" he hissed, pointing his wand at her throat. She seemed to be a little more alert again but he did not want to end the interrogation before he'd learned this most important piece of information.

#/#/#

"Well," Tilda said softly as they drove down the Greater Whinging High Street. "Almost home."

"Yeah," Harry said from under his Cloak. The silent miles felt like a leaden weight on his chest that he ached to throw off. To pass the time, he'd practiced some Metamorphmagus transformations while under the Cloak, where they couldn't be seen, but he didn't have a way to look at himself to see the results, so he finally just reverted to his usual appearance. There was no reason to continue to look like "James Malfoy".

"Erm, wasn't that funny, the bloke who didn't have any money at the café?" he said, trying to get any sort of conversation going. When she didn't respond, he went on awkwardly, "You know, the Viking-looking bloke with the red hair. Careful!" Tilda had been turning right and nearly drove into a lamppost instead; he could see her taking great gulping breaths. "Are you all right?"

She went on driving, looking calmer. "Yes, of course. I'm perfectly fine. I'm just—tired. I miscalculated on the turn is all. What were you saying?"

"Oh—I'm not sure. Wait—that's right. The bloke at the café. You think that was actually Monopoly money he was trying to use? Or do you reckon he was a counterfeiter?"

She gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. "I—I don't know. I didn't see before the cop hauled him off."

They drove past Privet Drive; a man Harry did not recognise was walking a puppy, strolling along slowly. Otherwise there was no one else about. He sighed, not looking forward to leaving Tilda but knowing that he had to. Worse than leaving her, though, would be facing the music for what he'd done.

Facing Dumbledore.

They passed Magnolia Crescent and Harry saw the man and puppy again; Harry would have suspected that he was following them except that the man didn't seem to notice the car at all. Still, Harry sat up, wondering whether he was being paranoid or observant. Tilda continued to drive in silence and Harry watched the man until he was out of sight. Suddenly, Tilda pulled the car over and turned off the motor. Harry stared at her through the Cloak.

"Harry," she said, "I just want to—to tell you how much it means to me to have my mum back. And how much this fortnight has meant to me. I know that this may be too much to ask—but please don't hate me. Promise me you'll get a proper girlfriend and forget all about me."

He nodded, then realised that she couldn't see him. "Of course. Yeah. No, I could never hate you."

He rather had the impression that she liked talking to him while he was under the Cloak, so she wouldn't have to look at him. They sat in silence for a few minutes while she collected herself. Finally, she started the car again and drove very slowly as they neared the end of their journey.

Harry had a jolt when she turned onto her street and he saw the man and his puppy _again_. It could just be coincidence, but what if it wasn't? Harry kept an eye on the man as Tilda left the car idling, walking to the garage to open the door. He heard the creak as the door was raised but continued to watch the man, whose puppy was peeing against a tree trunk.

Suddenly, he heard a very familiar noise: someone had been struck by a spell. The air crackled with energy. He turned and, to his horror, saw Tilda lying in the drive, very still. Still more shocking was that members of the Order of the Phoenix—including Dumbledore—were all over Mrs Figg's lawn.

He felt angry, angrier than he ever remembered being. He didn't know who had hit Tilda, but whoever it was, Harry was going to give them a piece of his mind, even if it had been Dumbledore himself who'd done it.

Mindless of what the dog-walker would see, he opened the passenger door, still in his Cloak, which was tripping him up. Annoyed, he whipped it off. He didn't care about the Muggle man; that's what memory charms were for, and he wasn't doing magic, technically. Unlike the person who had hexed Tilda.

Since he couldn't direct his question to a particular person he directed it at everyone present, feeling his face grow hot as he demanded, "What did you do that for? I was going to turn myself in tonight!"

Remus frowned at Harry. "I'm trying to—"

" _Aaaaargh!_ "

Harry saw one of the Order members go down after a bolt of red light hit him. Suddenly and soundlessly a new crop of wizards had appeared on Mrs Figg's lawn. Voldemort stood in their midst, tallest of them all, surrounded by a dozen Death Eaters. One of them was Severus Snape.

Almost casually, Voldemort appeared to be pointing his wand at Harry, who felt unable to move, paralysed. But then Voldemort abruptly changed his aim and a crackling arc of green light reached across the street where the Muggle man had been walking his puppy.

There was no thud; Harry forced himself to look over his shoulder to see what had happened. The man lay on the pavement, very still, staring lifelessly up at the night sky.

#/#/#

"Who else knows about me?" Percy demanded.

Dolores Umbridge gazed up at Percy, her glazed-over, pouchy toad's eyes revealing nothing of what might be going on in her head. "A lot of people know about you."

He breathed through his nose, frustrated. "And who else does your 'Master' know about? Who else?"

"Snape," she said automatically.

"You-Know-Who actually knows about him?" Percy said, appalled. "Did you—did you know this when you were teaching at Hogwarts?" He wondered whether it was possible that she had been the one to betray Snape to his former master.

She shook her head as though she were slightly dizzy. "I wish I'd known then. When Potter failed to tell me anything useful about Sirius Black after I gave him Veritaserum, I should have suspected that Snape had simply given me water or something equally harmless."

"Why did you want to know about Sirius Black? He was a Death Eater," he added, wondering what she would say to this misinformation.

"Now, Weasley, you and I both know that he was not," she said dreamily. "After I nearly grabbed his _head_ in the Gryffindor fire—and I heard Potter's voice in the background—I knew he had some connection to Potter. Why should Potter talk to the wizard who was supposed to be responsible for his parents being killed?" She seemed to be musing idly on this question. "And how did Black mysteriously dematerialise from Hogwarts two years ago when he was securely locked up, with no wand?"

"But why did you want to know this?"

He wasn't certain, but he thought her eyes looked a little less glazed-over. "I knew that if someone who could escape from Azkaban by himself was helping Potter, as well as escaping from under the nose of the Ministry of Magic and an army of Dementors, well, I knew that we had to eliminate that someone. I tried intercepting Potter's mail, as well as letters written to other students, should he ask Black to send him a message through someone else. Then, after Dumbledore slipped through our clutches, I finally gave Potter Veritaserum to ask him the former headmaster's whereabouts—as well as Black's.

"Unfortunately, after I had learned that Black held some importance to Potter but before I could do anything about it our Master had learned from another source that Sirius Black was the single most important person in the world to Potter. As I said, I hadn't had the opportunity to do anything truly useful for my Master before he disappeared fifteen years ago. I did not know whether he knew where Black was, but I hoped that if I learned of his whereabouts I could use the strength of the Ministry to capture him. He wouldn't stay in Ministry custody, of course. I should have realised that Snape did not give me genuine Veritaserum to question Potter, that he was another of Dumbledore's lackeys, like you. I knew that it was in the court records that he had been a spy just before my Master disappeared, but Lucius had told me that that was a mere ruse, to feed the Ministry misinformation. It was a ruse that served Snape well later, of course."

"So who knows about me _and_ about Snape?" he growled.

"A lot of people," she said, and he thought she might be smirking a little.

"A lot? Is that all you have to say?" It seemed to Percy that she was trying to fight the potion again; she had probably answered truthfully, but she had _not_ answered in detail. And she had been babbling for quite some time about Sirius and Snape; she could have been out from under the potion's influence for a while and he wouldn't have been able to tell through the swarm of banal information.

"Who knows?" Percy demanded, his wand in her face. "Names! I want names!" His voice shook; he wanted to know who would be coming after him, whose curse might finally end his life.

" _Expelliarmus!_ "

Percy hit the floor hard, his wand slipping from his grasp as it flew to the wizard standing in the doorway, who caught it neatly. Cornelius Fudge's face was flushed with anger and he was flanked by two Aurors with their wands drawn. Percy remembered the fear that had led Fudge to take Dementors with him when he'd gone to see Barty Crouch, Jr., and it seemed that he feared for his life more than ever, to travel with Aurors everywhere he went.

"Weasley! What is the meaning of this?" Fudge demanded.

Percy didn't know where to start—but he decided that implicating Umbridge as a Death Eater was far preferable to admitting to having been spying on Fudge for Dumbledore during the previous year.

"Madam Umbridge attacked me, but I subdued her. She has admitted to being a Death Eater, sir!" he said, springing to his feet.

"Dolores Umbridge a Death Eater!" Fudge cried. "Preposterous! Don't you think I'd know whether someone that close to me was loyal to someone else?"

Percy very pointedly did _not_ answer this question. He cleared his throat, saying, "She admitted to sending the Dementors after Potter last summer. Actually, my brother told me about that," he lied, as it was really Dumbledore who'd told him after _he'd_ learned about it from Harry. "And she was present when You-Know-Who came back. In that graveyard."

Fudge gave him a half-smile, as of an indulgent uncle preparing to explain the truth about Father Christmas to a child who'd just barely become old enough to handle this. "Percy, Percy—Potter named everyone who was present. In that article that recently appeared in the _Daily Prophet_ by that Skeeter woman."

 _You mean the interview that most people ignored when it was in the Quibbler,_ Percy thought.

"He named as many people as he could see whose faces he knew or who was named by You-Know-Who himself. But Harry didn't know everyone there and You-Know-Who didn't talk to everyone there. Harry said that too. There were people he didn't address."

Fudge was still smiling genially. "I know it is tempting to jump at the slightest sound and start hexing anyone nearby, Percy. Don't think I don't sympathise." Percy looked nervously at the Aurors. "I make certain that I have security with me at _all times_ these days. But Dolores has nothing but the best interests of the Ministry at heart, don't you Dolores? See, of course she does," he said, answering his own question when Umbridge gave an eerie smile—which was probably from fighting the potion—and inclined her head slightly. "Dolores Umbridge a Death Eater?" he said again, laughing as though this was hilarious.

Percy didn't know what to do. He wasn't certain why he'd thought it a good idea to try to contact Fudge at home; he probably would have received the same answer had he spoken to Fudge in the fire earlier. And he didn't know how to accuse Umbridge without blowing his own cover. He wasn't certain _why_ he still needed a cover, as Fudge was acknowledging Voldemort's return now, but Dumbledore felt that there were people on both sides of the divide in the Ministry who should not know what Percy's real work had been during the previous year. Percy trusted his judgment, but now he wondered whether he'd been too hasty not to argue.

"Please untie Dolores," Fudge said laconically to the Aurors. "And give her back her wand," he added, nodding at the fake wand on Percy's desk. He turned to Umbridge. "I trust that you are uninjured, Dolores? Will it help if Percy takes a few days off, to get some rest?" He raised his eyebrows at Percy, clicking his tongue like his mother. "Not getting enough sleep, are we? Overwork can be a terrible strain on the mind. Eight hours a night, I always say." He walked to the desk and picked up the fake wand, putting his own on the blotter. "This looks different, Dolores. Did you recently get a new one?"

Percy watched Umbridge closely while the Aurors waved their wands, making the bindings disappear from her arms and legs. She stood and walked to the desk, where Fudge was still examining the fake wand. Unfortunately, Percy did not have his own wand; Fudge had pocketed that after disarming him. And he realised a moment too late what she was going to do when she snatched up Fudge's wand and pointed it at Percy, crying, " _Stupefy!_ "

#/#/#

The Muggle man lay perfectly still, his puppy nowhere to be seen. Harry turned back to Voldemort; he could feel the laughter starting to bubble up from within him, making his scar ache. He feared that he would begin to laugh maniacally again, as he had when Voldemort was so happy about the Death Eaters escaping from Azkaban. _No,_ he thought, drawing his wand. _I will not be your puppet again, I will not let you into my head._ But even as he thought this he was dimly aware of another entity inside him; rage coursed through him at the intrusion and he cried out, "You'll regret that! _Ex—_ "

" _Protego!_ "

"— _pelliarmus!_ " Harry finished. The spell bounced harmlessly away from Voldemort, who had cast a shield charm too swiftly for Harry to successfully disarm him. _Why is he just shielding himself?_ Harry wondered. _Why isn't he trying to kill me, the way he killed that Muggle?_

" _Expelliarmus!_ " Dumbledore's voice roared, as though echoing Harry. To his surprise, Dumbledore managed to do something Harry had never seen accomplished with this spell; the crackling light from his wand splintered into separate strands and the wands belonging to the Death Eaters who had accompanied Voldemort flew into the air. They all fell backwards onto the ground, including Severus Snape.

Voldemort laughed again, the eerie sound echoing inside Harry's cranium; he held his mouth closed as tightly as he could, the temptation to start laughing himself almost overwhelming in its power. Never, at any previous time, had he wished so hard that he had succeeded in his Occlumency training.

Voldemort smirked. "As usual, Dumbledore, your pedestrian methods fail to anticipate me." He turned to Harry. "I know your weakness now, Potter. You may _think_ you have something I do not, but fear trumps everything, and _I_ have at my disposal something you _fear_ , the thing you fear _most_." He raised his wand and a flash of light emanated from it like a beacon.

The street immediately went dark, all of the lamps winking out simultaneously. A cold wind whipped the tree branches; it seemed to be blowing from all directions at once. Sticks, leaves and rubbish flew about and Harry had to squint and hold his hand over the top of his glasses to avoid small things blowing into his eyes.

Then he heard it: the all-too-familiar rattling sound. He remembered hearing it in the alley where he and Dudley had been the previous summer and it occurred to him for the first time that it was a _death rattle_. It was louder than he'd ever heard it, except for one other time, when he'd been on the shores of the lake at Hogwarts, having just narrowly escaped being killed by a werewolf…

The wind settled and everyone, including Voldemort and the Death Eaters, looked expectantly at the sky.

There were no stars.

#/#/#

Ron and Hermione sat in chairs on opposite sides of the kitchen fire. Ginny knelt on the hearth rug, playing with Crookshanks using a butterbeer cork tied to a thread, waving it before his face. He batted it out of his way with annoyance whenever she got too close with it. Hermione was reading, but Ginny could see that Ron was thinking very hard about something. Nonetheless, she was surprised when he began to speak heatedly, as though continuing a conversation they'd just been having.

"I know who it had to be!"

Ginny and Hermione frowned. "Who who had to be?" Ginny said, swinging the cork out of Crookshanks' reach again.

"Whoever opened the door! Kreacher, it had to be Kreacher!" His face was quite pink with excitement.

Ginny and Hermione looked at each other. "But Kreacher can probably pop in and out, like house-elves do. He wouldn't need to bother with the door. And Kreacher isn't serving anyone in this house anymore, Ron," Hermione said reasonably.

Ginny was surprised and grateful that this hadn't launched Hermione into one of her house elf diatribes; being Hermione's friend had meant that she'd had an earful of this in the previous two years, and a secondary reason that she'd wanted a spot on the Quidditch team was to have a good reason for not having the time to knit elf hats. (She'd was very bad at knitting; everything she attempted looked knobbly and misshapen, leading to snide criticisms from her brothers and exasperation from her mother.)

"How do we _know_ he can pop in and out?" Ron asked, standing and pacing nervously, as though it helped him think. "The times he left this house—did anyone see him do it? Maybe he can get from room to room that way, but has to leave by the front door like everyone else because of the spells Dumbledore put on the place."

Ginny thought about this; it was plausible. She looked at Hermione, who seemed to be reserving judgment.

"And it's true that he's probably serving Malfoy's mum now, but _that's my point_ ," Ron went on. Since he was standing and the fire was well below his face his eyes were thrown into shadow and the underside of his nose and chin were brightly illuminated. "What if Dumbledore doesn't have any spells that can be used to keep someone else's house-elf _out of Headquarters_ completely? Kreacher can't suddenly be excluded from the Fidelius Charm, as far as I know. He was already in on that, so there's nothing to be done about it. Luckily, _he_ can't tell Mrs Malfoy, as he's not the Secret Keeper. But I think he can still come and go as he pleases— _especially_ if he's doing his mistress's bidding. Then he _has_ to do whatever he's told or hurt himself. Not that Kreacher would ever disobey one of the Malfoys," he added with a sneer. Ginny thought this was for Hermione's benefit; he seemed to be looking pointedly at her, but because of the shadows on his face it was hard to be certain. "Probably wets himself with joy every time Malfoy's mum gives him an order, the eviler the better," he added.

"You mean 'the more evil the better,'" Hermione corrected him.

"I meant what I said!" he snapped crossly.

Hermione took a deep breath, making Ginny want to hold hers. "Now, I know you don't want to hear this, Ron, but Kreacher is only what the people he's served have made him, and as much as I hate to say it, that _includes_ Sirius."

"Don't you talk about Sirius!" Ron immediately shot back.

"Shut up, Hermione!" Ginny said quickly. She glared at her best friend, silently daring her to say something else against Sirius. _Underage magic be damned,_ she thought, shaking, wishing her wand wasn't in her bedroom.

Hermione gave them both a stricken look; it reminded Ginny of the expression Hermione had had when she'd tacitly agreed with Luna about Hagrid's teaching skills. Ginny knew that Hermione knew she was treading on dangerous ground with them both. "I'm not trying to speak ill of the dead!" Her voice verged on a whine. " _I'm not_. I'm just saying—"

"So—you don't think it's possible for the Malfoys to send Kreacher here to spy on us?" Ron said, standing over Hermione; she started to cower into her chair before looking annoyed with herself and sitting forward again, glaring at him defiantly. "Someone we can't stop from entering the house?" he went on. "Someone who can as good as Apparate anywhere he wants while we're too young to do it and don't even have a working fire on the Floo network to make an escape if we need to?" Ron sat again, running his hand over his face. He looked worried; Ginny didn't like Ron looking worried when spiders and Quidditch were not involved. Or riding to the Ministry on Thestrals.

What he said gave Ginny the shivers; she hadn't thought of this. Looking at the dark, shadowy expanse of the kitchen beyond the cosy firelight she suddenly felt very young and vulnerable and wished that one of the adults had stayed behind, especially one of her parents. Flying off to the Ministry with her brother and four friends was one thing; being sitting ducks in a house they couldn't leave was quite another. There were only three of them, and they were all underage. Knowing that she could legally perform magic if her life depended upon it was little comfort; the possibility of its getting to that point was suddenly all too real and their experience trying to fight Death Eaters at the Ministry quite fresh in her memory.

"Escape? Escape from what?" Hermione said scornfully.

"From Kreacher!" Ron and Ginny said together. Ginny was surprised; even though there _were_ times when she and Ron were in complete agreement, it always shocked her when those moments arrived.

Hermione snorted. "An attack from Kreacher? Are you mad?"

Ron stood again, his ears a brighter red than usual with the firelight behind him. His face was fully in shadow. "When Dobby went to Harry's house he was working for the Malfoys, and he could have done anything he wanted to him. Did it ever occur to you that maybe house-elves were originally enslaved because they're so powerful? If we didn't have these spells to control what they can do and make them punish themselves when they disobey, they might have killed every witch and wizard in Britain by now! You know your magical history—and I do, too, since you made me do revision night and day for the O.W.L.s. We had those wars with the goblins because they're damn powerful, and the only reason they haven't slit our throats in our sleep is because we've got them in charge of the gold and silver, so they're happy. For the moment. Who knows what could happen if they change their minds?

"And who do you think is most likely to own house-elves?" he went on, not giving either girl a chance to respond. "People like us, like my mum and dad with his Muggle-related job at the Ministry and never being taken seriously by anyone? Or people like the Malfoys, people on You-Know-Who's side? Which means that I don't think I'll ever trust another house-elf with the possible exception of Dobby. I mean—if I came across one at Hogwarts that I didn't know, how could I tell it wasn't working for a Death Eater? We _can't_ know, that's the long and the short of it. I don't trust Kreacher, I never did, and as far as I'm concerned it's _his_ fault Sirius is dead, because of the way he misled Harry, and if you say one more thing to defend that little pustule I'll—I'll—" He looked at Hermione and took a deep breath. "I'll never speak to you again," he finished quietly.

Ginny had been making noises of agreement with Ron during his rather long speech, afraid to break in with her own opinion (in part because it wasn't far off Ron's, and he seemed to be doing quite well without her), but now she stared at him in shocked silence. Hermione stared at him as well.

"Now, who wants to come with me to check on whether anyone is still in the house?" He pulled out his wand. "I don't care if I break the law to do it. And I'd like to see the Ministry try to find me here, anyway."

Ginny swallowed. "My wand is in our bedroom. We'll have to go there first."

The pair of them glared expectantly at Hermione, who looked both hurt and rebellious. She tried gazing pleadingly at Ron, but he turned away from her and started walking toward the stairs.

When she turned her pleading eyes to Ginny, Ginny felt sorry for her, but not too sorry. "I'm afraid I feel the same way Ron does, Hermione," she said in clipped tones. "Kreacher as good as killed Sirius. And because of him we _all_ went to the Ministry. _You_ could be dead now too, because of what he did. _And_ he still adores Bellatrix Lestrange, who _actually_ killed Sirius. Don't tell me Kreacher doesn't have free will, because he did everything in his power to defy Sirius's wishes while he was in this house and went running off to the Black family member of his choice as soon as he had the chance. I shall do a dance on the day I learn that he has died," she said, her voice very hard. She turned on her heel and followed Ron up the stairs.

#/#/#

Percy head felt heavy and he tried to open his eyes; he didn't know where he was at first, but after a few moments he realised he was in Fudge's office. The Minister and Umbridge stood near the fire speaking to someone's head. Percy couldn't see who it was.

"Yes, quite, quite unfortunate. Weasley seems to have cracked under the stress of the job. How quickly can you get a Healer here to look at him? I would have known about his condition sooner, but I was called away to Azkaban."

Percy couldn't hear the person in the fire, just indistinct words that were muffled by the crackling of the flames and the fuzziness in Percy's brain. When he thought Umbridge was turning toward him he closed his eyes again, then opened them only slightly, looking through his eyelashes.

Umbridge sent a sinister leer in his direction and Percy felt panic race through him. _Bloody hell. They're going to put me in St Mungo's with the people who've gone round the bend._

But when he gave this some serious thought he decided that this wasn't a bad idea. Because of Umbridge's presence it would be far harder to escape from the Ministry than from St Mungo's, and he didn't relish hexing the Minister for Magic, no matter how much of a pillock Fudge was.

He groaned melodramatically, pretending to have trouble sitting up. This got their attention, as intended, and Fudge strode over to him, clucking like a mother hen.

"There, there, Percy-my-lad! You'll be right as rain in no time. A few days rest in St Mungo's will relieve you of that stress, and then Dolores suggested a lovely holiday by the seaside, doesn't that sound nice? I take it you've never been."

"Sounds brilliant," Percy agreed in a feeble voice, nodding. "Been to Egypt. Loads of sand. Not the same, though." He coughed, not for dramatic effect but because his throat still ached from when Umbridge had put the Cruciatus Curse on him.

"Ah, right! The trip to Egypt your family won a few years back. Not the same thing indeed!" he chuckled. "Now then, you'll find the trip to St Mungo's far more relaxing if you're not awake."

Before Percy knew it, the Minister had put a sleeping charm on him. When he awoke he was in a hospital bed and someone distressingly familiar was leaning over him. His vacant smile did not extend to his bright blue eyes and his wavy blond hair seemed to be moving slightly in a perpetual breeze. He wore a long lilac dressing gown and was peering into Percy's face at very close range. Percy could have read by his dazzling white teeth if he'd wanted to.

"Oh, hello! You're awake!" he crowed. "Care to help me with my fan mail?" The wizard took a peacock-feather quill from the pocket of his dressing gown. "There's always loads of it. Can you do joined-up writing? I find that helps it go quickest. I'm Gilderoy Lockhart, as you probably know. Since I'm so famous. Who are you?"

Percy answered slowly; he knew that Lockhart's memory had been destroyed by Ron's broken wand three years earlier. And that he'd deserved it.

"Percy Weasley. You were my Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher in my sixth year," he said levelly, moving his eyes about to try to locate the exits.

"Was I? What are you doing to keep busy these days? Using everything I taught you, I expect?" he asked eagerly, still brandishing the quill.

"Oh, you know. The usual," Percy said carelessly. "Spying on the Minister for Magic. Being an International Man of Mystery."

"Jolly good! It's a lucky thing you had me for a teacher, yeah?" Lockhart responded, clearly quite pleased with himself.

"Er, you could say that," Percy said, not very happy with what he saw. The exit seemed to be at one end of the ward only, he didn't have a wand that he could see, and his clothes had been replaced by an annoyingly brief hospital smock in a revolting shade of green. He didn't seem to have been given a dressing gown to cover the smock. _I've got to get out of here,_ he thought, trying to work out how he was going to steal a wand from a Healer.

 _The loo. That's it. I'll ask directions to the loo._

Not listening to Lockhart prattle on about his fan mail, he got out of the bed and padded to the double doors leading out of the ward; small round windows were set into the doors but he couldn't see anyone in the corridor on the other side. As he was about to push them open, Lockhart said loudly, "You can't _leave_. The last time I did that they were quite cross with me."

He sounded very strict suddenly and Percy wondered how strong he was under the soft lilac fabric; Percy was as tall as Lockhart but thinner; he didn't know whether Lockhart's feeblemindedness meant that he'd hurt someone without provocation and with no regard for how much damage he might do to them. Hand-to-hand wrestling with a madman was not something Percy had planned on.

He wanted a wand and he wanted it _now_.

Unfortunately, when he tried pushing the doors open, he found that they were locked. "Erm," he said so Lockhart, "how _did_ you leave last time?"

Lockhart looked like he was trying very hard to remember. "No idea. But there were a lot of sparkly decorations about. Tinsel. That sort of thing."

 _Christmas_ , Percy thought. Must have been a slip-up. Not often repeated, he assumed. He looked through the window in the door again; there was a long corridor and then another set of double doors, also with small round windows. Beyond that he could see people passing, but he didn't see how he was going to get out _before_ nicking a wand.

Lockhart tapped him on the shoulder, making him jump. "So, then. Joined-up writing? Can you do it?"

Percy looked about desperately; the wall nearest what he assumed was Lockhart's bed displayed a gallery of Lockhart photographs smiling and waving at Percy with the same vacant expression as the real Lockhart. Farther along a rather furry woman licked her furry hand; when she suddenly barked, Percy jumped again. At the end of the ward a curtain had been drawn around the beds. Percy hated to think what was wrong with the people _there_.

A Healer open the far doors and start walking purposefully toward the doors where he stood; she was rather short and plump, like his mother, and had a kind face. He rushed back to his bed, opposite Lockhart's.

The Healer said, " _Alohomora,_ " and the door opened for her. Hoping she wouldn't have a chance to lock it again, Percy immediately sat up in bed and said, "Oh, good! I was hoping a Healer would come soon. Can you tell me where I am?"

He noticed that she did _not_ use a locking charm on the door before striding over to him; he didn't know whether she usually did this or trusted the patients not to run off while she was there, but if locking the door was her usual practise he'd successfully distracted her. She walked to his bedside and looked kindly at him, speaking slowly, as though he might be feeble-minded. "You are in St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and In—"

"No," he interrupted her, trying to work out how to sound as sane as possible. Suddenly this seemed quite difficult, since she was clearly convinced he had a mental problem of some sort. He also didn't think it boded well that he was in the same ward with Lockhart and the dog-woman. "I mean—what ward am I in? I'm Junior Assistant to the Minister; he felt I would benefit from some rest, but I don't understand why I'm in this particular ward."

She looked surprised; he didn't know why. There were too many reasons to choose from. "Rest? Your own dear mother brought you in—said you'd been tortured with Cruciatus by a Death Eater and that she'd be surprised if you were ever sensible again."

 _Well, she was half right,_ Percy thought. He shuddered at the image of Umbridge masquerading as his _mother_. "You didn't speak to the Minister at all?"

She looked at him like he was delusional and he wished he hadn't mentioned Fudge; if someone didn't know that he really _did_ work for the Minister it _could_ sound like he was harbouring grandiose delusions.

"The Minister for Magic?" she said, raising her eyebrows sceptically.

"Never mind," he said, knowing he'd ruined his chances of being taken seriously. "But—the name of this ward is—?"

"The Janus Thickey Ward for long-term residents," she informed him gently. He nodded, hoping he could still salvage the situation.

"Perhaps she thought it would be best for me to be here, where it's more peaceful," he said. Certainly, after talking to him, this witch couldn't still believe that he was damaged from Cruciatus? He wouldn't want to repeat it, but his throat was more damaged than his mind.

An abrupt clatter came from behind the curtain at the end of the ward. The Healer drew her lips into a line and strode toward the noise; her facial expression was at odds, however, with her bright tone of voice. "Frank! Alice! How are we this evening? Behaving ourselves, I hope?"

As soon as she'd gone round the curtain Percy took a chance and bolted toward the double doors; Lockhart stared at him but said nothing (for once). When he reached the other set of double doors leading to the busy corridor, he pushed them open, finding himself in a cool, high corridor where Healers were passing by with clipboards hugged to their chests, looking very busy. A rather young-looking apprentice Healer glanced up when he appeared before her; the witch seemed rather alarmed by Percy emerging from this ward. She was familiar to him; he thought she might have been a couple of years ahead of him in school.

She said the same thing Lockhart had: "You can't _leave_!"

He tried to calm her. "No, no, of course. I wasn't going to. I—I need to go to the loo in the worst way. I've just arrived and don't know where to go. Our toilet is backed up," he added, pointing over his shoulder, realising that they probably wouldn't keep the residents of the ward locked up with no way to relieve themselves. "One of the others tried to, erm, flush something they shouldn't."

He stood very close to her as he spoke, his smile as charming as he could make it, and she peered at him quizzically. "Don't I know you? Aren't you Percy Weasley? Whatever happened?" She pointed at the signpost for the ward. He was grateful that she looked away from him of her own accord; it gave him his opportunity.

"I'm not as bad as all that. They're rather full-up elsewhere. Just a bit of job-related stress. Some rest and relaxation. I'll be right as rain in no time. But the _loo_ —" Once again he hoped he sounded sane enough that she wouldn't raise the alarm. He would _not_ make the mistake of mentioning the Minister again.

"Oh, right, right. Sorry," she said, meeting his eye again. "Second door on your right, along there," she said, pointing. "Tell you what," she went on, eyeing him suspiciously, "I'll wait here for you. I'll be able to see you go in and come back out and we'll make certain you return to where you're supposed to be, yeah?"

Percy nodded. "Of course. I understand. Thanks."

She nodded and smiled. Percy walked to the door she had indicated, trying to move his arms as naturally as he could while holding her wand tightly against his right inner forearm. His heart was beating at twice its usual rate. When he reached the bathroom he immediately locked the door against intruders, quickly ascertained that no one else was in the bathroom, and raised the pilfered wand, Apparating to his flat.

He quickly changed his clothes and propped a letter on his desk for his parents and siblings; he always did this when he knew he was about to do something risky for Dumbledore. It usually sat in the top drawer, tucked in the back, but he'd felt it necessary to take it out more than once during the previous year; he was always glad to return home and put it away again. As he drew it out he thought, as he always did, _It's nothing, I'm sure. This is just a precaution_.

With another look around the small, neat flat, he waved the stolen wand.

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	17. Departures and Arrivals

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Seventeen**

 **Departures and Arrivals**

 **#/#/#**

It was difficult to see the first Dementor descend from the starless sky, but as it was followed by a second and a third and a fourth it seemed suddenly that the air above them was simply swarming with Dementors, black against black, but a _different_ sort of black. The black of the sky was the absence of light; the black of the Dementors was the tangible presence of despair. The wind continued to whip the trees and Harry heard voices in his mind, different voices than he'd heard before when he was near Dementors…

" _Where has Sirius gone? Kreacher, has he gone to the Department of Mysteries?"_

" _Master does not tell poor Kreacher where he is going."_

" _But you know! Don't you? You know where he is!"_

 _Cackling._

" _Master will not come back from the Department of Mysteries! Kreacher and his mistress are alone again!"_

Harry tried to clear his mind, tried to see what was going on around him, but instead he sank to his knees, a cold hopelessness slicing through him as the voices continued.

" _You need more persuasion? Very well—take the smallest one. Let him watch while we torture the little girl. I'll do it."_

He took a deep breath and tried to concentrate; pulling himself up by the handle on the car door, he tried to focus his eyes.

" _Whaddever you do, Harry, don'd gib it to him!"_

He swallowed and it felt like ice water was flowing down his throat. He could dimly see that someone was casting a spell at Voldemort, but he couldn't open his eyes enough to see who it was.

" _Hermione! Hermione, wake up…"_

" _Whaddid he do to her?"_

" _I dunno…"_

The death rattles were growing louder and Harry felt colder than ever. He tried to think happy thoughts, he tried as hard as he'd ever done, but too much had happened: Sirius was gone; Tilda loved him but didn't want to ruin her life by being with him; he was doomed to kill Voldemort or be killed by him; there was no good left, nothing to look forward to…

" _Ginny? What happened?"_

" _I think her ankle's broken, I heard something crack. Four of them chased us into a dark room full of planets; it was a very odd place, some of the time we were just floating in the dark…"_

After hearing her voice in his head Harry found himself thinking _Luna_. He remembered things Tilda had said about her, about her being a trusting person. He remembered offering to help her look for her things at the end of the term and the fact that she could see the Thestrals and didn't think he was mad.

Harry stood upright again, blindly pointing his wand in front of him. _Hermione is all right,_ he remembered. The Dementors had "helped" him to remember the bad, but not the good. _Neville found her pulse and carried her so she wouldn't be left behind. Ginny's ankle was broken, but Madam Pomfrey healed her. Neville's nose is all right again and he'll get a new wand._

Feeling a little clearer in his mind, he hoped that the Dementors wouldn't be able to draw on these good thoughts. He could see by the light of various wizards' crackling spells that Moody was attacking Voldemort. The old Auror didn't seem affected by the Dementors. Voldemort didn't seem affected either. Moody was not, however, doing as well as Dumbledore had at the Ministry. When a potentially fatal curse was heading toward him he Disapparated in the nick of time. Each time he reappeared he looked more exhausted. Voldemort seemed annoyed with Moody rather than challenged; Harry hoped Moody could continue to keep him occupied. He needed to keep his head clear so he could conjure a Patronus, not worry about what Voldemort was doing. In the eerie spell-light he saw that Tonks and the Auror who'd tried to arrest Dumbledore were huddled on the ground, unsuccessful in fighting the effect of the Dementors. Someone else was there, too, leaning against a tree as though she _would_ be on the ground had it not been there. He couldn't tell who it was. Lupin and Dumbledore cried, " _Expecto Patronum!_ " with their wands pointed heavenward. A jolt of pain shot through Harry's scar and he didn't see whether they produced corporeal Patronuses; however, when he opened his eyes very slightly he saw only silver mist dissipating.

The Death Eaters in the foetal position were clearly not unaffected by the Dementors but Voldemort seemed unconcerned about them as he duelled Moody. To Harry's horror, a Dementor hovered over one of the Death Eaters. The scaly, decomposing hand removed the Death Eater's mask and took down his hood, releasing a fall of pale blond hair that was one of the only bright spots in the unnaturally dark night.

As the Dementor lowered his hood and brought its mouth closer to Lucius Malfoy's, Harry saw that Snape was trying to conjure a Patronus himself, producing only a misty, insubstantial cloud of smoke. Or so Harry thought; the smoke abruptly unfurled and revealed itself to be a thick, ropy snake. It went after a Dementor he had not noticed; this one leaned over another Death Eater whose mask had also come off, revealing him to be Rodolphus Lestrange.

Harry sank to his knees again, suddenly full of doubt. _Is Snape on our side or isn't he? Why is he trying to save Death Eaters?_ He felt Voldemort's presence in his mind again, felt the hysterical laughter start to bubble up inside him; he pressed his left hand to his scar, willing the pain to go away, as he pointed his wand skyward and croaked, " _Expecto Patronum!_ "

A wisp of white fog drifted lazily from his wand. The laughter in his head grew louder. Harry knelt beside the car, still attempting to conjure a Patronus but feeling like he was going to black out from the sheer number of Dementors. He could hear laughter both with his ears and in his aching head as Voldemort continued to duel Moody. He had to try again, he just _had_ to. The Dementors had to be stopped, Voldemort had to be stopped.

He half-heartedly pointed his wand aloft, crying the incantation again. His voice sounded strange to him and he felt another jolt of pain sear through his scar, making him press his left hand to his head in agony again. _I'll never conjure a Patronus this way,_ he thought through the pain. The last time he'd been confronted with Dementors he hadn't been fighting off Voldemort in his mind, nor the time before that. It seemed that Voldemort might have finally found the way to beat him.

But to his surprise, his Patronus leapt forward and galloped through the air, the same beautiful silver stag Harry had last conjured for his Defence Against the Dark Arts exam. It charged the myriad Dementors, scattering them. He heard the incantation cried by two people to his right; this time Lupin's Patronus shot toward the Dementors, a large ghostly wolf galloping through the sky with Harry's stag. It was immediately joined by Dumbledore's Patronus. Harry grinned when he saw it, suddenly feeling happy enough to conjure another Patronus, and another and another…

The silver phoenix flew circles around the wolf and stag, and between the three of them they succeeded in scattering the army of Dementors to the winds. Voldemort jerked his head up from Moody, disbelief etched in his inhuman features. This gave Moody a moment's respite; he looked in Harry's direction, his eyes widening in shock for no reason Harry could think of. Why did he look like that?

Unfortunately, Voldemort was only briefly distracted; the second Moody looked away, Voldemort's curse hit the old Auror, who went over with a thud.

"Noooo!" Harry cried, scrambling onto the car's bonnet. Suddenly things were happening too quickly for him to take them in. _Percy Weasley_ was there, running from behind him. _Was that who Moody was looking at?_ Harry felt a hot surge of anger and hatred toward Ron's brother such as he had never felt before, even when he was eagerly writing down everything that occurred in Dumbledore's office when the DA finally came to light.

Dumbledore glared at Percy, crying, "Did the Minister send you?" Harry didn't think he sounded cross, though. "How many are coming?" Harry realised that he thought Percy would be in the vanguard of a group of reinforcements.

"It's no good, sir! She knows! She cursed me and told Fudge I was mad. I was taken to St Mungo's." Percy turned to Snape. "He knows about you, too!" Then he pointed at Rodolphus Lestrange. "And probably you, as well!"

Harry was _very_ confused. What on earth was Percy talking about? Maybe he _was_ mad. Snape's eyes widened, however, at Percy's news, and before Harry knew what was happening, his teacher and Rodolphus Lestrange disappeared, causing Voldemort to throw curses around in fury. Harry jumped to the ground on the street side of the car, ready to stun Percy if need be and use the car as a shield, if Percy tried to curse him back. Despite Dumbledore's greeting and Percy's news, Harry wasn't convinced that he could be trusted.

" _Avada—_ " Harry jerked his head up, seeing too late that Voldemort was pointing his wand at _him_.

" _Wingardium Leviosa!_ "

Harry fell back as Tilda's car _rose into the air_.

"— _Kedavra!_ "

Voldemort hadn't been as quick as the person who'd levitated the car. It didn't sound like Dumbledore; Harry thought it might have been Lupin. The car crackled all over with green light as Voldemort's curse hit it; the levitation spell didn't hold once this happened and the car dropped out of the air, landing with a crash, making Harry fall back, scrambling out of the way hastily.

" _Put your Invisibility Cloak on, Harry!_ "

He looked around in confusion before ducking behind the car and doing as the voice said. Another cry made him look up; Percy was bound, magical ropes holding his arms to his sides, wand still clutched in his fist. A masked Death Eater strode to him while Dumbledore took up Moody's part, duelling with Voldemort again, much as they had at the Ministry.

Harry looked at Percy, but both he and the Death Eater who'd been approaching him were gone. A moment later, a stray curse from the duel between Voldemort and Dumbledore hit the ground near where he'd seen Tilda lying, stunned. His heart in his throat, Harry scrambled around the car so he could make sure she was all right; maybe he could hide her under the Cloak with him.

But to his horror, Tilda was no longer lying in the drive. She had vanished; another curse had hit the ground where she'd been and there was a small, smoking crater. He couldn't breathe, going to his knees in his cloak, staring at the smoking hole, oblivious to the battle still raging.

"Tilda?" he whispered with a croak in his voice. And Snape—had he Apparated? Or had he been utterly destroyed as well? And what of Percy? And Moody?

Harry's head hurt, but for once it wasn't because of his scar. _It's all my fault._ Even Moody, who wouldn't have been here if not for Harry. Percy distracted him, but it was pointless to be angry with Percy when he might be dead as well.

This couldn't go on. It had to end. And he was going to be the one to end it. A Death Eater who'd acquired another wand was going after Tonks and the Auror, so Harry pointed his wand under the Cloak and stunned the man. This allowed Lupin to stun another one and shield Tonks from being struck by what looked like the Cruciatus Curse. Someone cried, " _Expelliarmus_!" and the Death Eater's wand went flying through the air.

"Accio wand!" a familiar woman's voice cried, retrieving the fallen wand. Harry wanted to laugh, seeing now that the witch he hadn't recognised before was his head of house. Professor McGonagall pointed her wand at the disarmed Death Eater. "That was Alastor Moody's wand!" she cried, clearly outraged. "And you are _not to touch it!_ "

Two Death Eaters went for her at the same time, but she was suddenly gone; a small tabby cat leaped at the taller Death Eater, clinging to his mask. He roared when the cat's claws sank into his chest. Tonks, Lupin and the Auror successfully subdued the other Death Eaters and were removing their masks. McGonagall appeared to have her Death Eater under control so Harry turned back to Voldemort and Dumbledore. The moment he did Voldemort aimed a curse at Dumbledore, who Disapparated. He thought. Somehow it didn't look quite right. And he didn't immediately reappear.

Harry threw off the Invisibility Cloak, glaring at Voldemort, brandishing his wand in one hand and his Cloak in the other. "Where is he? What did you do with him?" he demanded. Voldemort reared back his head and laughed; the laughter cut painfully through Harry's head and he cried out, holding his hand to his scar again, sinking to his knees, his eyes closed in agony.

" _Tom Riddle!_ " a strange voice cried, hollow and yet somehow sibilant. Voldemort turned to face him but seemed to be looking beyond Harry for the source of the voice. " _I said Tom Riddle!_ " the voice cried again, this time sounding like it was on the far side of Mrs Figg's garden.

The stars had reappeared with the departure of the Dementors and the street lamps were aglow again; Voldemort's complexion was coming very close to matching the red of his inhuman eyes.

"Show yourself!" he hissed "Who speaks?" He looked to his left, to his right, he turned around, his robes whipping about his legs.

" _The time is not yet ripe. Potter is yet a child and you are destined to meet as equals. Do not attempt to thwart fate. You shall meet and you shall battle. But that is for the future…_ " It sounded oddly to Harry like a snake's hiss and yet also not unlike the strange voice in which Trelawney had prophesied Wormtail's return to Voldemort. He didn't know what to think. " _Tom Riddle!_ " the voice hissed again, sounding like it was coming from Tilda's roof now. " _Begone! You shall confront the enemy when the time is ripe._ "

To Harry's surprise, Voldemort seemed to take this to heart, which seemed queer to him. Why should this voice convince him to leave Harry alone for now? Was the person speaking making another Prophecy? Had Dumbledore brought Trelawney to Surrey?

"Come!" he cried to his Death Eaters, though many were not in a condition to obey. He didn't seem to care; when Voldemort Disapparated only two Death Eaters also vanished. Harry hoped the rest would be locked up for the remainder of their lives.

Suddenly, Dumbledore was beside him, his hand on his shoulder. "Are you all right, Harry?"

He nodded, baffled. "Who was speaking? Where did you go? Can—can you throw your voice? You know—do ventriloquism? I mean with magic."

"Let us simply be grateful that we can get you out of here safely—without anyone else being injured," he said, which wasn't an answer to his questions. They both looked toward the fallen Moody. Harry felt like he was going to be sick. _Alastor Moody. Dead. Snape, possibly dead. And Tilda, oh god, Tilda. Because of me. And that Muggle man, too,_ he remembered.

It seemed that Dumbledore had read his mind. "Harry. Moody knew—he always knew—the risks of his work. He lived a very, very long time and sustained a number of injuries before—well—" Dumbledore's mouth was very thin. Minerva McGonagall returned to her human form and looked grimly at Moody's body.

"I shall see to him, Headmaster. You worry about Potter." But she wouldn't look at Harry and he felt worse than ever. Why was Dumbledore only talking about Moody? What about Snape? And what had Percy been talking about?

He looked where Tilda had been again, unable to believe that she was gone. It was unreal, completely unreal. He had slipped into her house to hide and ended up getting her killed. He was as good as a murderer. It wasn't just Cedric Diggory and Sirius whose deaths were on his head now. So many others…

"Here, Harry," Dumbledore said quietly. "We'll clear up the mess," he said, as though 'the mess' were the broken silver instruments in his office, or something similar, rather than loss of human life. Harry suddenly hated him a great deal, and not because Voldemort was looking through his eyes at the headmaster of Hogwarts. Harry hated that Dumbledore seemed to think there were losses that could be considered 'acceptable.' He'd heard the prime minister or president of some war-torn country talk about that on the news: 'acceptable losses.' How were _any_ losses acceptable? Wasn't that why you were fighting a war in the first place?

But most of all he hated that he was the one who was responsible for the deaths. It was all his fault.

He had no time to consider this further, however; Dumbledore dropped into his hand something that looked like a phoenix feather. The moment it touched his skin he felt a tug behind his navel, and then he was whirling away in a maelstrom of dark and light, unseen winds buffeting him violently, until he finally landed with a thump in the dingy front hall of number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

Harry looked around the front hall of number twelve, Grimmauld Place. Everything was as he remembered, including—

"IT'S THAT HALF-BLOODED TRAITOR TO WIZARD-KIND AGAIN, SULLYING THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS…"

The other portraits starting moaning and complaining about the noise, just as Harry remembered. He wished they'd be quiet so he could let someone know he'd arrived. But he realised he didn't know what to say and suddenly wished he'd come to London by a slower method than a Portkey.

Mrs Black's screaming was making his head throb again, just when the pain from Voldemort had begun to dissipate. However, even above her noise he heard a conversation drifting down from the upper reaches of the house.

"Hurry up! She's gone off again. He might be in the hall," Ginny said breathlessly.

"I'm going as fast as I can! Wounded here, remember?" Ron snapped.

"Well how was I supposed to know he'd react that way? When's the last time anyone fed him?" Hermione said imperiously.

"Wasn't it _your_ turn this morning, Ron?" Ginny sounded like she knew the answer.

"I was getting around to it! He didn't have to take my arm off!" Ron whinged.

"Stop being a big baby! It's just your hand." Hermione was the one being snappish now.

"Well, it _is_ rather a lot of blood," Ginny said, sounding concerned.

 _What've they been doing?_ Harry wondered as their footsteps drew nearer. It sounded like they were only one flight above him now.

"Thank you, Ginny!" Ron said, as though her comment vindicated him. "I tell you, I am through with Care of Magical Creatures! I get an infected hand from a baby dragon, I get lured into the forest by Hagrid and end up attacked by giant spiders—"

"Both of those things happened before you took Care of Magical Creatures," Hermione reminded him helpfully.

"—and then there were the bloody Skrewts and those nasty tree-branch things—" he went on, ignoring her.

" _Bowtruckles_ ," Ginny and Hermione said in unison, making Harry smile. He hadn't thought anything _could_ make him smile again, but it was oddly comforting to hear his friends bickering as they came down the stairs. During the previous year he thought he'd go mad listening to them; now it was the most welcome sound in the world. Except—they would want to know what happened. Which brought him back to what he would say to them. He sobered, thinking of Moody. And Snape and Percy.

And Tilda.

" _Harry!_ "

He looked up, trying to find words, but he had no time to think. They ran toward him while he scrambled awkwardly to his feet and then Hermione's hair was in his face as she hugged him and Ron slapped his shoulder with his right hand, his left hand held awkwardly before his chest, wrapped in a very bloody cloth.

"AND HERE COME THE BLOOD TRAITORS AND THE MUDBLOOD—"

"What happened to _you_?" Harry shouted at Ron over Mrs Black's diatribe, nodding at the damp, dark red makeshift bandage.

"Oh, sod that," Ron exclaimed, though he'd been whinging about it a minute earlier. "What about you? How'd you get here? Where's everyone else?"

"We should have realised it was you! Mrs Black doesn't go on about half-bloods much. Is everyone who came to get you all right?" Ginny wanted to know, biting her lip.

"Yes, where are the others?" Hermione asked, her voice squeaking.

Harry looked helplessly at them, at a complete loss. "I, erm, I don't know about _everyone_. But—don't you think we should take care of Ron's hand? What've you been _doing_?"

"Buckbeak. Tried to use my hand for a snack. In all of the excitement, we—"

"—you mean _you_ —" Hermione interrupted.

"—forgot to feed him," Ron finished sheepishly.

Harry frowned as they made their way to the kitchen stairs. "So why'd you go upstairs without food?"

"Ron and Hermione heard the front door open and close. We were searching the house for an intruder," Ginny told him.

Harry was torn between being surprised at this or surprised that as they passed Mrs Black she mysteriously stopped shouting. The hall seemed very quiet suddenly. "An intruder!" he exclaimed, deciding that he didn't care about Mrs Black. "But wouldn't that have to be someone in the Order of the Phoenix? Are you saying there's a traitor in the Order?" he gasped as they stumbled into the kitchen.

"Kreacher!" Ron said between gritted teeth. "We were looking for Kreacher. He can still come and go as he pleases, as far as we know." Ron sat in a chair by the fire and Ginny went to get bandages and salve. Harry sat in the other chair by the hearth while Hermione began to unwrap the bloody cloth from Ron's hand. Ron let out a string of expletives directed at Kreacher, as though he were present, and Harry was amazed that Hermione made no response but a slight tightening of the corners of her mouth as she continued to unwind the blood-stained material.

In a way, Harry was glad they had something to distract them. Ginny explained Ron's theory about Kreacher while she cleaned Ron's wound and applied _Able Abel's No-Scar Salve_ to it; Hermione was silent, however, as she wound a clean bandage around his hand and Ginny and Ron took turns telling him about Draco Malfoy attacking them while they were playing Quidditch at the Burrow. When Ron was properly bandaged, however, the three of them looked at him expectantly, and he knew he couldn't put off telling them what had happened any longer.

"Harry! There you are!" a voice suddenly said from the fire. Harry turned his chair in surprise. Fred and George Weasley's heads were sitting in the flames.

"Is everyone there, Fred? Did they all get back to the shop all right?" Ginny said anxiously, kneeling on the hearth.

Fred looked at George. "I think we should let Mum and Dad tell you about that."

"We just got everyone out of the fire from Surrey. Couldn't talk earlier," George added.

"Remus is handing chocolate round to everybody," Fred said. "Have any yet, Harry?"

Harry shook his head, swallowing, remembering the Dementors. George reached his hand out from the fire, holding some chocolate, which Harry took gratefully, but just as he was about to bite into it, Ginny knocked it from his hand.

"Ginny! I was about to—"

"Yes, and you were also about to turn into a chicken," she said, glowering at the twins. She picked up the chocolate and pointed out the alternating squares stamped with three entwined W's; the others had a raised design that looked like a rooster's head.

"Aw, Ginny! We still need to test our Chick'N Chocolates on other people before we put them out in the shop. Just because _you_ didn't want to help test them…"

Fred groaned. "I've had so much I wanted chicken feed for my tea tonight."

"I hope you haven't been giving Chick'N Chocolates to members of the Order!" Hermione said, scandalised.

"Only those who wanted to give it a go. We have the boring stuff, too," George said, handing Harry some chocolate in a Honeydukes wrapper. Hermione snatched it from his hand and turned it over and over, inspecting it, before she would let Harry have it.

"Dumbledore wanted to try ours," Fred said brightly. "He was quite keen, actually."

"Our best customer since we opened the shop," George added, winking at his twin.

"Are they coming soon?" Ginny wanted to know, accepting a piece of chocolate from Harry when he offered it; Ron was already chewing what looked like a mouthful.

"Mum and Dad should be. Lupin and McGonagall as well," Fred said. "Mum and Dad were waiting here with us to help the survivors when they got back—"

"Survivors!" Hermione exclaimed. "So—so there were some who—who _didn't_ —"

"Get a grip, Hermione," George said. "It's just an expression." At a glance from his twin, he added, "Well, mostly. Anyway, Dumbledore will be along as soon as he's finished moulting. I think. Can't remember now what he said he was going to do next before he started crowing. He might be going off to the Ministry first. Tonks and the other Auror who went had to report, so she won't be at the meeting until later."

"We'll be coming after we've put the shop back in order," Fred told them. "Shouldn't be long."

"Yeah," George added, nodding at Ron's hand. "Try not to maim yourself 'til then, Ron."

Ron made a face at him but the fire was already empty. Hermione turned to Harry in alarm. "Wait a minute. Remus wouldn't have been handing out chocolate unless—"

Harry nodded miserably. "There were Dementors. More than I've ever seen."

"Blimey," Ron breathed. "Must have been _all_ of them from Azkaban—"

Hermione nodded. "They couldn't have had all of them—or even half—guarding the entrances to Hogwarts in our third year. That wouldn't have left enough at the prison."

"It was at least three or four times that many," Harry said quietly, holding what was left of the chocolate. He broke off another square, putting it in his mouth slowly.

"Harry, I think you should have the rest of the chocolate," Ginny said, looking quite pale. "You obviously need it more than we do."

Ron looked longingly at the chocolate, but after Ginny poked his leg with her elbow he said, "Erm, right. I didn't want more anyway."

The door to the kitchen burst open and Mr and Mrs Weasley entered, followed swiftly by Remus Lupin, Professor McGonagall, Mundungus Fletcher, and Bill Weasley. Mrs Weasley exclaimed over Harry when she saw him, hugging him and giving him a kiss on each cheek, but McGonagall still wouldn't look at him and Remus seemed very sad when he met Harry's eye. Sad and something else. _Disappointed_.

Harry turned to Mundungus and Bill in surprise. "Fred and George didn't mention you waiting at the shop with them."

"That's because we weren't. We were right there in Surrey," Bill said.

"But—but I didn't see you," Harry sputtered in confusion. "Were you hiding?"

Bill grinned. "Yeah, right behind Rodolphus Lestrange's face."

"And Lucius Malfoy's," Dung added with a small bow.

"That was you?" Harry gasped. Ron had been released from a bone-crushing hug from his mother and was gaping at Bill and Mundungus.

"There wasn't anything in the _Prophet_ about Malfoy escaping from Azkaban!"

"No," Remus said, glaring at Mundungus; Harry had a feeling that this was supposed to be reserved for the meeting, but the cat was out of the bag now. "It was just a matter of time, though, without Dementors there. Kingsley and Tonks can tell you about it when you see them. The Ministry is having to use so many Aurors at Azkaban now, Fudge was only too happy to let this be an operation for the Order, except for two token Aurors. One of whom is also a member of the Order, but the Ministry don't know that, of course."

"But—but—" Ron stuttered; "the Death Eaters who were released by the Ministry—"

Remus shook his head, smiling. "None of them were actually released. They—and Lucius Malfoy—were moved temporarily to the Hogwarts dungeons, in a very secure wing, and the Ministry _claimed_ they were released. They'll be back in Ministry custody before the new term, of course. There were people in the Ministry we didn't strictly trust, you see, so after Dumbledore arranged it with Fudge this prevented them—well, I might as well say _Umbridge_ —from knowing where they really were. Not that Dumbledore was stupid enough to tell Fudge he suspected Umbridge. He just asked him not to tell anyone else in the Ministry that it was a ruse. Members of the Order have been impersonating the supposedly-released Death Eaters."

"Like me," Bill said, starting to smile, but then turning a little green. "Oi, Remus—have some more chocolate on you?"

Remus took out another Honeydukes bar; when Bill had taken a little, Mundungus pounced on the rest. Harry dropped his jaw. "Wait—you were almost Kissed by a Dementor!" Dung nodded, his mouth full of chocolate. Harry turned to Bill. "And you—you disappeared. But you're all right now. And Snape—what happened?"

Bill chewed and swallowed. "We were Transfigured. Into rocks. Rather a shock to find everything over when we were changed back again. But I reckon it's a good thing. 'The Dark Lord,' as Snape calls him, would have taken care of us next, probably."

Harry frowned. "Why?"

"Our cover was blown." Harry was about to ask how he knew this, but then he remembered: Percy had come to warn them that they were no longer safely undercover. He'd sounded like he'd been spying as well, and he'd said something about Umbridge, which didn't come as a shock. "Didn't you hear?"

"Yeah, I heard what Percy said," Harry said softly. Considering that he'd probably saved Snape's and Bill's lives by warning them and Transfiguring them he felt like it wasn't the best time to blame Moody's death on him. And Moody _had_ been struggling during the duel. But it was still difficult not to blame Percy.

"Wait a minute— _Percy_?" Ron gasped. "That git?"

"Dumbledore's most valuable spy during this last year," Mrs Weasley interjected hotly, looking both very proud and like she was about to cry. She nodded at Harry. "He's the one got Dumbledore to the Ministry last year for your hearing, just in time." Hermione and Ginny also looked shocked.

"Do the twins know?" Ginny asked her mother, her eyes round.

"Yes, of course they know. Now. He's still at the shop with them." She smiled, though tears were rolling down her cheeks. "Percy was telling them about his work during the last year and they were laughing together and—I've never seen them get along so." She gave a great sniff and took out a handkerchief, dabbing at her eyes. "He had a very close call tonight, you see. Dolores Umbridge started out interrogating him, but he ended up interrogating _her_. Except that Fudge interrupted and didn't believe Percy when he said she'd confessed to being a Death Eater. He stunned Percy and then my boy had to escape from the spell-damage ward at St Mungo's!" she exclaimed. "He went to Surrey, to warn Professor Snape and your brother."

Harry tried not to sound like he was accusing Percy of anything when he said, "I reckon that's what distracted Moody during the duel."

" _Moody!_ " Ron and Hermione said in unison. Ginny looked saddened and horrified.

Professor McGonagall finally looked at him, very sternly. "Don't blame Percy Weasley, Potter. I did not see what happened, but Alastor Moody was trained to notice whether someone new was Apparating into a battle. He was going to take a look to see whether the new arrival was friend or foe, wasn't he? He probably thought he was protecting _you_ , or someone else. Alastor Moody wasn't distracted, Potter. He was doing his job. It was just—too difficult a job at that point…"

Harry looked at his feet, then up at her, swallowing. "Sorry. I—I didn't mean to—"

"Is anyone else—?" Ron interrupted. Remus shook his head; he understood the question.

"No. But you lot should go upstairs. Dumbledore will be here soon and we'll be starting the meeting. We have a lot to talk about. Members of the Order whose cover is blown, what to do about the Dementors, working out where Voldemort is going to strike next, now that Harry's safely back here—"

"—how to keep Kreacher out of Headquarters," Ron added with a growl.

Mrs Weasley looked startled. "What?"

"Kreacher. He was here," Ron told her.

Her mouth went very thin. "Oh, dear. Yes, well, we certainly will discuss that."

Fred and George entered with Dumbledore and Percy, who looked rather sheepishly at them all. Oddly enough, Hermione walked up to him and gave him a hug, which he returned awkwardly. Ron's ears were a bit red and Percy looked at her with surprise.

"Welcome back," Hermione said. Percy looked shyly at them all before meeting Harry's eye.

"All right, Harry?" His voice shook a little and sounded quite scratchy.

Harry released the resentment he'd been harbouring since he'd decided that Percy had caused Moody's death. He nodded and said, "All right, Percy."

Mrs Weasley was clucking over him. "Listen to that voice! Are you coming down with a cold? Or have you been drinking Firewhiskey?" She shook her head. "I knew it! Living in your own flat, no one to answer to…"

Percy laughed and said huskily, "I wish it was from Firewhiskey, or a cold. I'll tell you in a minute. I'd love a cup of tea."

Harry caught Dumbledore's eye and he sidled next to him while the others moved with Percy to the long kitchen table. "Can I talk to you for a minute, sir? Before I'm kicked out for the meeting?"

"Of course, Harry," he replied, looking at him for only a moment before gently taking his arm and leading him out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the front hall. "But let us speak quietly." He motioned with his head toward Mrs Black's curtained painting.

Harry nodded. "I was wondering, sir—is Tilda—Miss Harrison—is she all right?"

Dumbledore hesitated before saying, "Professor Snape is seeing to her. She is having her memory modified."

Harry's eyes widened. "How much? I mean—she just reconciled with her mum today. I don't care if she doesn't remember me, but she was going to Australia…"

Dumbledore nodded, holding up his hand. "Yes, yes, she will still remember that. Remus Lupin stunned her, you see, because he didn't want her to see anything that might transpire if a confrontation should occur, which it did, of course."

"What happened, though? Was she also Transfigured into a rock, like Snape and Bill?"

Dumbledore looked startled. "Who told you about—?"

"Bill told us. I reckon Percy did it."

Dumbledore looked grim. "It is not the time to get into details of that sort."

"So she's really all right?"

Dumbledore hesitated again. "She is perfectly safe, Harry. But you should not contact her. If she is going to leave the country for a while, that sounds like a very good thing."

Harry wasn't sure he believed him. He sounded like he was hiding something. Harry was tired of having things hidden from him, but he didn't want to shout and have to compete with Mrs Black. Instead Harry looked at him suspiciously. Dumbledore looked away, which made Harry cross. _I thought we were done with that._

"Ah," Dumbledore said brightly as Ron, Hermione and Ginny ascended the stairs; "here come the others. We should start the meeting."

"What about Snape?" Harry wondered what he was _really_ doing at Tilda's. He hoped he wouldn't get rid of a fortnight of her memories. _If_ she was all right.

" _Professor_ Snape should be arriving shortly," Dumbledore said, still not looking at Harry. Hermione, Ron and Ginny mumbled good night to Dumbledore and went past the two of them, up to the bedrooms. "Good night, Mr Weasley, Miss Weasley, Miss Granger." Harry watched them go. "And good night, Harry," he said at last.

"Wait—I just remembered! What about that poor Muggle who was killed?"

Oddly enough, Dumbledore turned and looked at him again, straight in the eye. "Yes, yes. I've already had Remus looking into that. Very odd, very odd indeed…"

"What's very odd?" Harry wanted to know. "There was a man across the street with his dog and he was killed by Voldemort. Didn't he have any identification?"

"He didn't have any—" Dumbledore stopped abruptly. "Harry. It isn't the time. You should concern yourself with sleep. I said Remus is looking into it. He will continue."

"But he died because of me! And so did Moody!" Harry exclaimed. "And before this Moody lived for almost an entire year in his own trunk because of me!"

Dumbledore shook his head. "Harry, you cannot claim responsibility for everything Voldemort and his Death Eaters do. We will have other opportunities to speak. I must get down to the meeting and you should go to bed," he said with finality, descending the stairs. Before he closed the door, he looked up at Harry and said, "Oh, I almost forgot, Harry. Happy Birthday." The door closed with a loud _thunk_ and Harry was left standing in the hall, alone amongst the flickering gas lamps, hissing like snakes upon the high, dark walls.

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 **Note:** In this chapter there are scattered lines excerpted from Chapter 34 of _Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix_ by JK Rowling (when Harry is affected by the Dementors).


	18. Talking Pictures

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 **Chapter Eighteen**

 **Talking Pictures**

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Two days after returning from Surrey, Harry yawned and rose from the kitchen table after eating breakfast, feeling aimless. After staying in Tilda's house for a fortnight, pretending he didn't exist for part of the time, it was very strange to be able to talk to other people and not have to wear his Invisibility Cloak, hush his voice, or avoid walking in front of windows. He didn't quite know what to do with himself and wasn't especially keen to be alone, but they all seemed to think he _wanted_ to be alone quite a lot, so he was. Unfortunately, this made it rather difficult for him not to think about what had almost happened with Tilda, and he hoped she really was all right, visiting her mother.

He decided to seek out Ron and Hermione to find out if there was any news about Voldemort or the Death Eaters. He climbed the kitchen stairs quickly, taking them two at a time. When he reached the front hall, Ginny was standing at the drawing room door. In the gloom, he could see that she was using Extendable Ears to listen through the door. As Harry approached, she coloured and put them behind her back, looking very guilty.

"Hi, Ginny," he whispered. "An Order meeting? Isn't it a bit risky to be listening right out here? Your mum will probably come when she's finished the washing up."

Ginny bit her lip and glanced at the door. "No, it's not an Order meeting." She stepped away from the drawing room, shoving the Extendable Ears into her pockets. She was wearing Muggle clothes, a simple denim skirt and white blouse, and the Ears didn't fit properly in her pockets but made her hips bulge in a rather unflattering fashion. When she looked down and realized this, she swore and took them out of her pockets again.

"I can take them," Harry said. "They'll make my pockets bulge too, but no one'll be able to tell under this old shirt of Dudley's." Snape had arrived the previous morning with all of Harry's clothes and school supplies, including his broom. Luckily, Harry hadn't had to see him. But sure enough, once the Ears were in his pockets and his shirt pulled down again, it was impossible to tell they were there.

"Thanks," she started to say, but Harry interrupted her.

"If it isn't an Order meeting," he said, no longer whispering, "what is it?"

Ginny hushed him and pulled him away from the door, then thought better of that. She jerked her head at the stairs and he nodded, following her up, wondering just what _was_ going on in the drawing room.

Halfway up the stairs, Ginny turned around furtively and glanced at the closed door before speaking to Harry again. "It's Ron and Hermione," she whispered.

Harry frowned. "So? I was looking for them. I wanted to find out if—"

"Sssh!" Ginny said quickly, looking at the door again.

"What?" Harry stared at her; she was being very queer.

"Can't you _guess_?" She rolled her eyes.

He was feeling a bit insulted by the eye-roll and tried to wrack his brain for what could be going on in the closed drawing room between Ron and Hermione.

He opened his eyes wide as he realized, and she grinned broadly at him. "Not that it's cut down on their arguments. I think they _like_ having rows. And of course, after a row, there's always the making up."

"So—so you were listening to them—"

She turned deep red. "Don't tell them. They already caught me once. When I was a first year, I thought Percy was going to hex me when I stumbled on him and his girlfriend."

Harry frowned. "Well, wanting a little privacy is one thing, but hexing someone is going a bit far, isn't it? Even when I thought he was a—well, anyway, I can't see Percy doing that, or his girlfriend, just because someone caught them kissing." Ginny turned an even deeper shade of red. Harry dropped his jaw. "Percy and that girl—they _were_ just kissing, weren't they?"

Ginny cleared her throat. "I reckon they could have been. If having your trousers down around your ankles is necessary to snog."

Harry laughed loudly—too loudly—and Ginny put her hand over his mouth, her eyes large and apprehensive. "They'll bloody hear you!" she hissed.

Stifling his laughter, he took her hand from his mouth and she let him. "Sorry," he whispered again. "I thought it was hard enough thinking of Percy as a spy, but I'm having an even harder time thinking of Percy and a girl doing more than snogging." He was starting to feel depressed again, though, thinking about Percy, who had had to leave the country. He was going to be travelling about, trying to get wizards in other countries on their side, as Charlie had also been doing. Percy's contacts from his year working in International Magical Co-operation would prove useful. Mrs Weasley had been heartbroken about having to say goodbye to him again.

Ginny giggled, having no idea what he was thinking about. "You know, I didn't even notice that his trousers _were_ around his ankles, because of his robes. I didn't think about it for over a year, and then it was Percy himself who brought it up. Said he'd forgiven me for catching him with his _guard_ down—" They both guffawed; Harry was starting to feel better again. "—and he was glad I hadn't said anything about it and gave him a chance to zip up. I never even _noticed_ that he had to zip up after I discovered them together. If he hadn't said that I'd have gone on thinking it was just snogging. After all, Penelope had only taken off her robe and shoes."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "The last I heard it wasn't necessary to take off your shoes to kiss."

She continued to shake as she laughed quietly, looking furtively at the door again. When she looked back at Harry, she had a mischievous light in her eye. "So—do you want to use the Ears to listen? Mind you, a lot of the time they're actually revising."

He wavered for only a moment before nodding, unable to quell his curiosity. He knew Ron and Hermione would be livid if they knew, but it was impossible to resist the urge to snoop. He crept toward the door with Ginny, taking the Extendable Ears out of his pockets and putting one to his right ear, handing the other to Ginny so she could use it. She nodded in thanks and the two of them could soon hear everything on the other side of the door. It didn't sound like revision, but he still couldn't place the noise.

Harry frowned. "What _is_ that?" he mouthed at her, afraid to make noise.

She raised an eyebrow. "Kissing. When they're revising it's noisier. Pages turning."

"Oh," he said blankly. "It _is_ a lot quieter than I expected. At least he's not like Davies. It isn't all wet and squelchy-sounding." He was glad that he didn't know whether he had made noise while kissing Tilda.

"Oh," she said, with a mock-sad expression. "You didn't like snogging Roger Davies."

He laughed in spite of himself before covering his mouth with his hand. "You're going to make me make too much noise!"

Her eyes were merry. "I've heard about Davies. Luna says girls who date him should wear towels around their necks, to catch the drool."

Harry was on the verge of a laughing jag now. "We'd better get out of here, I think," he finally choked out, removing the Extendable Ear from his own ear. "In a minute I'm going to start laughing and won't be able to stop, and then they'll know what we've been doing."

Ginny shrugged and followed him up the stairs. "It's not very interesting, anyway, but listening to other people snogging is still more interesting than being one of the people involved. I found it to be rather a bore, personally."

They passed the heads of Kreacher's house elf ancestors and walked down the upstairs corridor to Harry's room; Harry turned for a moment to look at her. It was very hard for him to not think about Tilda again. "So you didn't much like kissing Michael Corner?"

She shook her head as he opened the door. "Not really. I kept trying to find ways to get the time to pass more quickly, with no luck. And once when he caught me checking my watch, we had a bit of a row about that. _Your eyes are supposed to be closed, you're supposed to be focussed on me, blah blah blah_. You'd think I was reading _Quidditch Monthly_ over his shoulder to hear him tell it. What is there to pay attention _to_? Once you're all right with where the noses are it's just a lot of breathing into each other's mouths. I can think of better ways to spend my time."

She threw herself onto Ron's bed and Harry sat on his own bed. "Well, Cho spent most of the time crying all over me about Cedric. I don't think Michael Corner will think much of her technique. Perhaps she should have accepted Davies when he asked her out. They both seem to like a lot of wetness."

"Ha!" Ginny said loudly, before covering her mouth, looking guilty. Harry laughed too.

"It's okay. We're upstairs now. You don't have to be quiet."

"That's right. It's just—a funny image. Davies drooling on Cho, Cho bawling on him…"

Harry remembered what Ginny had said about Luna's comment concerning Davies. "Has Luna been out with Davies?" For some reason, this bothered him.

Ginny looked at him as though he should know better. "Of course Luna hasn't been out with Davies. First—he thinks she's a nutter. Second—she fancies someone else."

"Oh," he said, wondering why his chest suddenly felt tight. He remembered Luna looking for her belongings before they were going to leave school for the summer. But in his memory, for some reason, he saw Tilda telling him that her things usually turned up, not to worry… He shook his head to clear it, looking at Ginny again.

"I can keep a secret. Who's she fancy?"

"You're serious, aren't you? You couldn't _tell_?"

Harry swallowed, torn between hoping she was going to say his name and hoping she wouldn't. _Since when do I fancy Luna Lovegood?_ he asked himself. But for some reason, every time he tried to picture Luna's face, he saw Tilda's in his mind's eye.

"Well, she—she sometimes—"

" _Sometimes_? You didn't notice the way she was about Ron?"

He was jolted for a moment. "Erm—Ron?"

Ginny frowned. "Yes, Ron. Could she have been much more obvious? The Gryffindor lion hat? And singing that horrid song day and night! Why do you think Hermione doesn't like her much?"

"Well, Hermione worked with her and Rita to get my interview into the _Quibbler_."

"Exactly. She did _that_ , and you know how she feels about Rita. That's how Hermione is. She'd work with the devil himself to get something necessary done. If there's important work, it doesn't matter who the other person is. But she doesn't much like Luna. It's a bit awkward for me sometimes. They're both my friends. Luna's always asking me questions about Ron—she's been writing me regular letters—and it's been even more difficult for me to answer her letters since Ron and Hermione finally stopped dancing around the issue of the two of them."

"How _did_ that happen?" Harry wanted to know, swallowing. He didn't think he wanted to hear more about both Luna and Hermione fancying Ron. For some reason, hearing about Luna fancying Ron—which he _did_ probably know if he'd given it any thought—made him feel like he was losing Tilda all over again. He wasn't sure why he felt that way, but he did. His stomach hurt, as though someone had kicked him.

"Well, you know that we'd gone home first. Gnomes had _completely_ taken over the garden. It was a right mess. The plan was to stay there until the end of the month, then come here. Ron wanted to get in some Quidditch practice, so he and I went to the old orchard. And then Malfoy tried to get revenge on me for that Bat Bogey Hex I put on him. But you know all about that." She told him about what Moody had seen through the door at St Mungo's, but at the mention of Moody, they both went quiet again.

Harry thought he heard some movement in Phineas Nigellus's empty frame, which made him nervous. Ginny leaned forward, glancing at the portrait out of the corner of her eye. "I think we should go somewhere else," she whispered. "I have a bad feeling about _him_. I'm not so sure _he_ doesn't have Extendable Ears."

Harry wasn't so sure about Nigellus either. "Okay. Let's go up and visit Buckbeak."

"Good idea," she agreed. "But let's take some food." After going to the kitchen, they climbed up the stairs to the top of the house, where Buckbeak had his lair. As they entered, the beast became very agitated. Harry winced as he stepped on the bones of small animals. When Buckbeak saw him, Harry bowed deeply and Ginny followed suit. Buckbeak bowed in response, and when he rose again, Harry gave him the food, stroking his feathers after he'd eaten and patting his smooth rump affectionately. Ginny stood on Buckbeak's other side, using her fingers to preen him.

Humming softly and suddenly looking sad, she said, "He misses Sirius," into the silence.

Harry's throat felt tight. He looked at her; she was sniffing and seemed to be holding her eyes open very wide, as though that would keep her from crying.

"He's not the only one," Harry said softly, continuing to pet Buckbeak. She nodded.

He hadn't thought about how the others would feel about Sirius, but then he remembered that Ginny had been able to spend all of the previous summer in the Black house, and that she was as interested in going to the Ministry to save Sirius as Harry had been. They petted the hippogriff in silence until the beast seemed unsettled and moved away from them, kneeling on some straw in the corner, where he set to work worrying a rather large bone. Harry leaned against the wall, twirling a piece of straw.

"You never told me how Ron and Hermione got into the row at St Mungo's," he said, before she could say anything else about Sirius. He couldn't go through that just now; he wasn't interested in breaking down and crying in front of Ginny, nor having to cope if she started crying. He didn't think it would be like Cho crying, but he still felt ill-equipped to comfort someone else when he felt so miserable about Sirius and Moody. And Tilda.

She told him what had happened when Mrs Weasley had let slip that Ron's middle name was Bilius. "Knowing my Mum she would have done something to get them together if they hadn't done it on their own at last. She's a bit mad about matchmaking. Goes on about how none of the girls she went to school with would be married if not for her." Ginny rolled her eyes. "Must run in the family." She reddened.

Harry didn't understand. "Why do you say that?"

She looked uncomfortable. "You heard Ron on the train." Her voice was very soft.

Harry wracked his brains for what Ron was supposed to have said about matchmaking, then shrugged. "Sorry, I'm not remembering. A lot has happened."

She looked at Buckbeak, crunching his bone. "Well, I mentioned that Michael and I had broken up and then I mentioned _Dean's_ name, and Ron—"

Harry remembered now. "Oh! I see." He remembered thinking that Ron was looking at him very strangely after he'd told his sister to choose someone more 'worthy' next time.

"I mean—he used to _like_ Dean!" she said, throwing up her hands.

Harry shrugged. "I don't think he has anything against him."

"No, he _does_ have something against Dean now. You missed the row when you were in one of your detentions with Umbridge, but he caught Dean drawing my picture and had a bit of an 'episode,' as Mum says. He came _completely_ unhinged. I mean—I'd become friends with Dean. All of this didn't just come out of the blue."

Harry was confused. "What do you mean he caught Dean _drawing_ you?"

"Drawing _my picture_. He's really good. Wants to go to art school. After Hogwarts, of course. At any rate, he asked me if I could pose for him, and—"

"And you said _yes_?" Harry said, wide-eyed, trying _not_ to imagine her without clothes, being drawn by Dean. He remembered seeing Tilda remove her dressing gown again, the first time he'd ever seen a woman without any clothes. That made him remember how much it _hurt_ when Tilda told him that they couldn't be together, and it was like being kicked in the stomach all over again.

She shrugged casually. "Of course I did. Why not?"

Harry couldn't believe how nonchalant she was being; he was still distracted by thoughts of Naked Ginny and Naked Tilda, into the bargain. "If you were posing in the nude for Dean, of _course_ Ron was upset!" He tried to seem more like a concerned brother than someone who might be picturing her without her clothes. _I should definitely not be thinking about that!_ he thought, making it even more difficult not to think about it.

Ginny made a face. "What on _earth_ made you think I was posing in the _nude_ for Dean? I was fully clothed, Harry! Good heavens, what do you take me for?"

Despite her words, her face was glowing, and Harry could feel his own face growing hotter. Why _had_ he immediately assumed that she'd been without clothes? "Well, if you—you were fully clothed, why was Ron cross?" That was it; he'd assumed that her state of undress would be the reason for Ron's reaction.

"Well, I _was_ wearing clothes, but—" Her flush did not dissipate and she strode toward the door quite suddenly. "Do you want to see some of the drawings he gave me? Maybe you'll understand what I mean, how good he is."

Harry looked at Buckbeak; it really wasn't that interesting or fun to hang about with a hippogriff. He agreed and followed her down the stairs to the room she shared with Hermione. Harry hadn't been here before; it was very nearly as stark as the room he shared with Ron but for a painting of a very severe-looking woman over the mantel. She held a baby in her arms. Something about the baby looked familiar. For that matter, the woman looked familiar as well.

Harry practically jumped out of his skin when the portrait addressed Ginny. "What do you seek, my dear?" Harry backed up and sat on one of the beds while Ginny continued to search through her dresser; she knelt on the floor before the open drawers, bent over.

"Those drawings that Dean gave me," she said carelessly, as though she'd expected to be addressed. Harry stared at the woman; he couldn't think where he'd seen her before.

"The drawer above that one," she informed Ginny, who slammed the bottom drawer shut and opened the next one up.

"Got them! Thanks," she said amiably to the painting. The baby awoke and began to howl. He still looked familiar to Harry. Thinking about it, he realized it was probably because they were Blacks and there was a family resemblance. _That's all it is,_ he thought, seeing in his mind's eye yet again Sirius falling through the Veil…

"The baby is hungry," the woman said. "Excuse me; I will take care of this in private."

Ginny nodded, still kneeling on the floor. "Oh, of course, Mrs Black."

As the woman left the portrait, carrying the baby, Harry stared in shock at the space where she'd been. "Mrs Black! But she's so—"

"Sane? I know. That's Sirius's _grandmother_ , not his mum. Still a bit barmy about the pureblood thing, but she's nice to me, usually. She sometimes says things about Hermione being Muggle-born, but not in front of her. Once she asked me how I can bear to share a room with her, but she hasn't repeated it since I told her off for that. The one downstairs, on the other hand—"

"—doesn't hide how she feels about _anyone._ "

"Exactly," she said grimly. She stood, but Harry was still staring at the empty portrait.

"So the baby is—"

"Sirius's dad."

He swallowed, thinking it very unfortunate that a painting of Sirius hadn't been preserved, even a painting of him as a baby. However, after giving it a moment's thought he decided that he didn't really want to try to talk to a baby. A baby certainly couldn't talk back. For the millionth time he wished that he had used the mirror Sirius had given him to find out whether he was all right. The desire to speak to him was suddenly quite overwhelming.

Ginny stood. "Here they are," she said with a forced cheerfulness. She sat on the bed beside him and opened a small cardboard portfolio. Taking it from her, Harry looked at the drawing on top: Ginny sitting sideways in a red armchair in the Gryffindor common room, her legs draped over the arm, a book propped on her knees. She wore jeans and a blouse, but her feet were bare. Her hair was a riot of red, nearly blending with the chair in places. Dean had carefully used coloured pencils to add shading, light and shadow to the composition. Harry could see how absorbed in the book she was, how firmly ensconced in the chair.

"He's really good," Harry breathed, amazed by the detail, by the way the light from the candles created pools of warmth on the rug, on Ginny's book, on her bright hair. He'd exactly captured her profile and the small slender fingers holding the book. He glanced up at Ginny, who was blushing again and trying not to look pleased.

"Go on—look at the rest," she urged him, turning over the picture he'd just seen. The next showed Ginny—clearly on a _bed_ —lying on her side with her head propped on one arm. This time she wore a cardigan over a blouse and the same denim skirt she was wearing as she sat beside him, though her reclining position showed rather more of her upper leg than was visible at the moment. Harry swallowed. _If I could have drawn Tilda_ …

Ginny went to the mantel, moving some things around, looking very shy now. When he turned the drawing over he saw that there was writing on the back. _My dearest Ginny…_

He reddened and turned quickly to another drawing, not wanting to read what Dean had written, thinking of how embarrassed he'd be if he'd written a letter to Tilda and someone else read it. In the next drawing Ginny was looking forward, a frank, open expression on her face, and a little bit of a challenge in her eyes. Harry imagined Dean looking at her for a very long time while drawing this, and he also imagined Dean thinking of drawing her while writing the letter that was on the back of the other drawing.

When he had looked at all of them, she returned to the bed and closed the portfolio, tying the ribbon at the edge, still rather pink. Putting it in her drawer again, she said, "I don't know whether I should bother trying to have any contact with him during the holiday. Everything like that makes Mum and Dad so nervous these days. And he lives right here in London, too! It's so frustrating. And there's what Ron said—"

"About what?"

Ginny sighed and looked uncomfortable. "You know." She cleared her throat but didn't finish. Harry had a feeling he knew what she meant.

"Oh, you're afraid he's going to try to play matchmaker?"

She nodded miserably. "With absolutely no regard for the fact that you're not interested in me and that I'd like to see Dean! He's as bad as Hermione, sometimes, with her house-elf liberation thing. Ron told her that Dobby is the one who took all of the hats she left lying about the common room. That was part of their row. I forgot to mention it. I didn't know about that. Did you?"

Harry laughed, trying not to think about the other things she'd been saying. "Yes, I knew."

"So," she said suddenly, "about bloody time, if you ask me. The pair of them."

Harry thought so, too. "He was belching up slugs for her in second year," he said, by way of agreement.

Ginny laughed and grimaced at the same time. "Oh, don't remind me! And I was _hoping_ that the two of them being together would mean he'd forget about matchmaking," she said quietly. "It did, for a while. Just temporarily, though. He's been singing your praises to me constantly. I've wanted to hex him more than once to shut him up. Not that I don't think you're brilliant, Harry," she added. "But he _knows_ you're not interested in me. It's not fair to you. And there's Dean."

Harry watched her, standing near the mantel after closing the dresser drawer. Mrs Black had returned with Sirius's father and was settling in her chair again. It seemed that there was no place in the house to have a discussion without a portrait overhearing or a hippogriff making a great racket gnawing on bones. Or without having to deal with the issue of Ron and Hermione using the room for snogging. Harry missed the Burrow, where they used to be able to amble out into the garden whenever they wanted, or play Quidditch in the orchard. Where Draco Malfoy had been lurking, intending to attack Ginny.

She went to the door of the room and opened it; Harry followed her into the corridor. They reached the front hall and Ginny put her ear to the drawing room door, not bothering with the Extendable Ears this time. She stepped away, sighing. "Revision now. Too noisy for snogging." She shuddered.

 _Michael Corner must have been the world's worst kisser to put her off it so,_ Harry thought ruefully, no longer assuming that he was the worst in the world at this. Tilda hadn't seemed to mind kissing him. She had been upset with herself for liking it too much. _Stop thinking about Tilda,_ he ordered himself.

"I didn't get to see the twins much the other night. How are they?" he asked as they reached the kitchen. He'd been expecting to see Mrs Weasley there, but she'd evidently finished the washing up and had gone elsewhere. Crookshanks was curled on the hearth rug, but when they sat in the chairs by the fire he leapt onto Ginny's lap, purring loudly. She scratched the enormous cat behind the ears, making his purr change pitch subtly. Though it was summer, Harry was glad of the fire; the kitchen was rather cold.

"They're good, better than good. Their new shop in Diagon Alley is simply _amazing_. Or at least—so I hear." She stroked Crookshanks' fur.

"I couldn't believe it when they said they'd got premises. It's brilliant!" He thought wistfully of their triumphant exit from the castle. He thought, _Maybe I should just leave school without doing sixth and seventh years. Then I could join the Order and really concentrate on fighting Voldemort_.

"Yes, and a little bird told me who gave them the money," she said slyly, continuing to stroke the ecstatic cat.

Harry sat up straight. "They told you?" Ginny rolled her eyes and Harry realized that she had used the Extendable Ears again. "Ah, I see."

"Yes, and I'll probably be old and grey before I get to see the place. Or out of Hogwarts, at any rate," she groused, rubbing Crookshanks between his ears.

"Why?"

"Why? Do you recall going to Diagon Alley for our school things last year? No. Do you remember the last time you had ice cream at Florean Fortescue's?"

"Yeah, it was—" _Before Voldemort was back,_ he remembered.

"Right," Ginny said, as though he'd spoken his thought. "Mum and Dad don't think it's safe for any of us in Diagon Alley anymore, so we're stuck here all summer, and all during the Christmas holiday, too, probably. Unless we're ordered to stay at the castle. I understand how Sirius felt now, being cooped up all the time," she said, then stopped herself, looking like she wanted to bite her tongue. "Oh, Harry. I'm sorry—"

Harry shook his head, smiling ruefully. "Don't be. You can _talk_ about him, Ginny. I want you to. I don't want people to act like he never existed."

She nodded. "All right. I wasn't sure. I mean—I didn't mind being stuck in the house so much last summer, somehow. He was here to talk to. That helped. But I don't think we were much of a comfort to _him._ He always seemed so _restless._ "

Harry looked at the fire and thought about the first time he'd been to Diagon Alley with Hagrid. "You're sure there's nothing we can say to convince your parents to let us visit Fred and George's shop? Even if we have someone go with us? I'd love to see it. And I'll bet Ron and Hermione would, too."

She sat up suddenly, her eyes wide. "No! Let's leave Ron and Hermione out of this. That way, I could ask Dean to meet me there."

Suddenly, the idea of going with Ginny to the twins' shop so she could meet up with Dean Thomas made him a little uncomfortable. "What if the twins tell someone about that?"

She shrugged. "When they found out about Michael they were all right with it. And if we get Bill to take us, he wouldn't tell, either."

Harry cleared his throat, nervous about this. "Still—"

"I know!" she said suddenly. "We could make Ron think his little matchmaking scheme is working and we're going to the shop together, properly chaperoned by Bill, of course, and we'll just happen to run into Dean and _Luna_ there! I'm sure Luna would go along. And then you could go off and talk to her while I talk to Dean."

Suddenly, this sounded much more interesting to Harry. "I could go off with Luna?"

"You don't mind, do you? Oh, please tell me if you do."

He pictured Luna looking for her belongings again, and this time she stayed Luna in his mind, instead of becoming Tilda. There was something about Luna Lovegood…

"I don't mind. To tell you the truth—" He hesitated. "I thought you were going to tell me before that Luna fancied _me_ , and I was just a little disappointed when you didn't."

Ginny looked shocked. "Oh. I—I didn't realize. All right, then," she said, with a shake in her voice. "Well—that actually works out quite well, then. In fact, it's almost too perfect. This _would_ solve a lot of problems at once. Since we'd be giving the impression that we're going to Diagon Alley together, Ron might stop his attempts at matchmaking; I could see Dean; you could see Luna; and maybe she'll stop obsessing over Ron and I won't have this awkwardness anymore between me, Hermione and Luna. It _could_ work. If Mum and Dad let Bill take us, that is. They still might not approve."

Harry nodded at the fire. "Couldn't we go by Floo? Then we wouldn't even have to walk about in the rest of Diagon Alley."

Ginny bit her lip. "Let me talk to Bill about it." She looked excited at the prospect of getting out of the house; her eyes shone in the firelight. Harry remembered looking at Tilda's eyes just before they'd kissed…

"The thing about kissing," he said suddenly, not thinking about what a drastic change of subject this was; "is that, yeah, it seems like a ruddy stupid thing to do. Unless you're doing it with the _right_ person."

He looked at Ginny, whose eyes were wide with fright, it seemed. "Erm, I reckon you might be right. I _have_ wondered what it's like to kiss Dean." She cleared her throat for a moment, before changing the subject again. "At any rate, you haven't had a chance to talk at all about what you've been doing for the past fortnight. What on earth have _you_ been getting up to?"

Harry looked away from her, every moment he spent with Tilda suddenly rushing painfully back. "I kept busy," he said hoarsely, his throat tight.

"Busy? Doing what?"

He stared into the fire and said softly, "It's—it's a long story. You see, I was—I was staying with a former teacher."

She stopped petting Crookshanks, who leapt onto the hearth rug again, bristling with indignation. Harry knew that if he looked at Ginny, he couldn't do this, and he needed to, he desperately needed to tell someone. Remembering Ginny needing to talk to someone in her first year, he decided that he shouldn't keep this bottled up until Voldemort or a Death Eater found a way to exploit this need.

Never looking directly at her, and without prompting, he gazed into the fire and began to tell her everything.

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	19. The Other Foot

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 **Note:** This is it—the jump to Harry's adult years. Reminder: ONLY the content of the first FIVE canon books is being taken into account in this story because that's all that existed in 2004, when this was written. (No Horcruxes, no Slughorn, etc.) Events from Harry's sixth and seventh years in the _Replay_ universe will only be recounted in flashback, and are very different from Harry's sixth and seventh years in the _Psychic Serpent_ universe, not to mention the canon HP books. _Replay_ also includes "next generation" characters different from those in the epilogue of _Deathly Hallows_ (which, again, did not exist in 2004). Carry on!

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 **Replay**

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 **Chapter Nineteen**

 **The Other Foot**

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Ron Weasley looked around the graveyard where he'd just Apparated. Harry had repeatedly assured him that it was far enough from the town that no Muggles were likely to see anyone arriving, especially as there were many tall monuments to hide behind, but it still made Ron nervous, apart from the fact that graveyards in general made him nervous. If Harry had bought his house from a wizard he wouldn't have worried as much, but he'd bought it from a Muggle architect who'd converted the old stone pile into a private residence, which meant that Muggles knew where it _was_.

Luckily, it wasn't a market day in the town, so the nearby road was virtually deserted. Ron glanced up at the tawny-coloured Gothic church with its steeply-pitched roof, tall leaded windows, tile roof, bell tower and spire, wondering again what had led Harry to purchase St Clare's Chapel as his home. They'd barely been out of Hogwarts for a month when he'd done it. Hedwig had flown in the kitchen window at the Burrow with a note for Ron on a sunny summer morning; Harry wanted to meet him at St Clare's Chapel near Barnard Castle, on the way to Teesdale. He included a map; otherwise there was no explanation as to why he'd asked Ron to come to a small country church in Durham.

Harry had been changed by the summer between his fifth and sixth years, but seemed to perk up again briefly when the new term began and he was permitted to rejoin the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Dumbledore also wanted him to lead the DA as an official school club, which was another thing that cheered Harry considerably. He'd spent the rest of the summer mooning around number twelve, Grimmauld Place and Ginny seemed to be the only one who could get him to talk about what had happened; he refused to give Ron and Hermione any details, and _four_ years later Ron was still in the dark about that summer. But after a good start to their sixth year, Harry had gone silent and morose again when the messages started appearing on the castle walls not long before the Christmas holiday, and the members of the DA started to disappear…

Ron knew that he also shouldn't have been surprised about the experiences of their seventh year producing a change in Harry, but even taking that into account, Harry _had_ been decidedly strange since he'd got rid of Voldemort once and for all two months before buying St Clare's. By turns moody and effusive, Ron never knew which Harry he would encounter on any given day. The invitation to meet him seemed to have come on one of Harry's "up" days, but Ron knew that it could turn into a "down" day with absolutely no notice. He tended to tread very lightly around his best friend since they'd left school. Two years later Harry was just as unpredictable.

The first time he'd Apparated to the graveyard, Harry had asked Ron whether he thought _she'd_ like it. Ron was taken aback, since he didn't think Harry had even asked her to marry him, plus she still had a year of school to go. Harry had laughed, saying that he wasn't there because he was planning a wedding—he'd bought the old chapel to be his home. But he admitted that it would be good for a wedding as well.

Ron shook this memory from his brain as he picked his way through the headstones and grander monuments. He didn't fancy the idea of living in the middle of a graveyard, but Harry thought it would make a nice place for children to play. "It should give them a good healthy attitude toward death. I could have used that when I was a kid. Now that I've been through the Veil and back—"

"Yeah, well I went through the Veil and back with you, and I still think it's morbid to live in a graveyard," Ron had said, shuddering. Harry had merely laughed.

When Ron came to the vestry door he knocked on it loudly; the door swung open after a half minute, but it was Neville Longbottom, not Harry, who admitted him. Neville looked like he'd been gardening and had come to Durham without changing his clothes. He still wore muddy Wellies and was tracking footprints on the stone flags of the entryway.

"Ron! I'm glad you're here! Can you _please_ do something to _calm him down_?" Neville hissed.

"How bad is he?" Ron whispered, trying to peer into the entrance's dark recesses, in case Harry was hovering nearby.

"Worse than his wedding day, and you remember how bad _that_ was."

"Bloody hell," Ron muttered. "What's he doing, exactly?"

"Well, he's not really coping with the wizarding world at the moment, let's put it that way." Neville spoke with one dirt-encrusted hand to the side of his mouth, as though that would keep Harry from hearing.

Ron slapped himself on the brow. "Not again. If he hates everything magical so much why didn't he just break his wand and go off to live with the Muggles?"

"Well, he's not like this all the time. Just last week he summoned a—"

"I wasn't looking for an answer, Longbottom," Ron said, rolling his eyes and walking past Neville, his thin spring robe billowing out behind him like a cape.

"So sorry, _Weasley._ " Neville sighed wearily. "I never can tell when someone's asking a rhetonical—rhetoral—you know. A question that doesn't need to be answered," Neville mumbled. "But _some_ people find it, erm, _endearing_."

Ron smirked. "Like your girlfriend?"

Neville turned bright red. "Well—yes. Anyway, maybe you can get him to—"

" _Ron_!"

Ron jerked his head up as Harry strode across the huge drawing room, his hair standing on end as it always had done and his vivid green eyes wild. Harry grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him vigorously. He looked like he hadn't used his Metamorphmagus abilities to shave in days. "Ron! Thank Merlin you're here! I've been going mad trying to convince them that I should be with her! I have to be there, I have to make sure she's going to be all right!"

Ron took Harry's hands off him, gently but firmly, before pointing wordlessly at a chair by the fire. Ron sat in a chair opposite him. "It's going to be okay, Harry. Slow down and tell me who's with her."

Sweat beaded on Harry's brow as he regarded his best friend. "Madam Porter and your mum, and Neville said Hermione's getting here as soon as she can. But _I_ want to be with her! Why do we have to do this _here_ instead of at St Mungo's?"

Ron laughed for a moment, but forced himself to sober when he saw Harry's face. "St Mungo's? Muggles may go to hospital for this, but their doctors also cut people up and sew them back together and other barbaric things. She's not _sick_ , Harry, she's giving birth. And just about any magical means of getting her to St Mungo's would probably be pretty dangerous in her state."

Harry nodded. "Right. Floo? No good. The spinning. The Knight Bus? A bloody disaster. You'd think wizards could have worked out some _comfortable_ means of travel by now. She couldn't exactly get there on a broom, either…"

"This is a perfectly natural thing, Harry," Neville chimed in. "Madam Porter is the best midwife around, and I brought her some herbs she asked for from my greenhouse, to make a nice tea that helps with labour. Witches have been using the same herbs to help women in childbirth for thousands of years. Don't you remember your History of Magic? Before the Secrecy, Muggles always used to go to witches for help. They knew what to do."

" _Sometimes_ ," Harry said, his voice shaking. "And then sometimes when things happened that witches couldn't deal with they ended up being hounded out of town. Or worse. What if something goes wrong? Her water broke before she had any contractions. I was reading about that; it's dangerous to have a dry birth."

He was up and pacing again; Ron grimaced at Neville. "Good one, Neville. Very helpful," he said dryly. "Did Hermione tell you to say all that?"

Neville made a face at Ron that gave him the appearance of being eleven again. Ron stood and put his hand on Harry's shoulder, trying to still his frenzied pacing. "Harry. Mate. It'll be all right. I know you've no experience with how wizards handle this—"

"And you do? She's won't be nineteen for almost four months! I'm not yet twenty—" He wrung his hands.

"Well, weren't your mum and dad about nineteen or twenty when you were born, Harry?" Neville asked.

"Yes, but that—well, it just seems different. I feel like I'm still a kid! Like I just got my Hogwarts letter."

Ron raised his eyebrows. "And yet you got married. Eleven-year-olds aren't known for that. Not sure when I'll feel ready myself."

Neville cleared his throat. "Erm, right. _There's_ a surprise. That wouldn't have anything to do with having the emotional range of a teaspoon, now would it?"

Ron bristled. "If you've something to say to me, Longbottom, say it, instead of just spewing up Hermione's words!"

Neville looked defiantly at him. "If I do, then I shall," he answered stoutly.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Listen, if the pair of you are trying to distract me—"

At that moment another distraction appeared. Molly Weasley ran down one of the twin staircases leading up to the bedrooms from the drawing room, which had once been the chapel's sanctuary. Harry remembered his wedding day, eight months earlier, when he had watched _her_ descending those stairs on her father's arm…

"Harry! The first one's here! It's a girl!" Mrs Weasley exclaimed, tears in her eyes.

"A girl!" Harry exclaimed; he moved his lips after that, but he seemed to have lost his voice, though he looked happy. Neville and Ron thumped him on the back, laughing, and Harry finally managed to speak again. "What—what's she look like?"

"Bright red and screaming like a banshee," Molly said, beaming. "And the blackest hair I've ever seen on a baby."

"Eyes?"

"Two of them, mostly closed still. And two hands, feet, ears, all the other parts in good order. I'd best get back upstairs to help with the other one."

"What other one?" Harry asked blankly.

"Why, the other baby! It's twins! I thought you knew…" she trailed off, looking helplessly at him. Harry gawped at her.

#/#/#

Harry couldn't believe his ears. "When—when you said _the first one_ I thought you meant—Oh, bloody hell. _Twins_." He sat down hard on the nearest chair. Mrs Weasley made a clucking noise as she went back up the stairs.

"You'll get used to the idea soon enough."

But all Harry could do was stare into space. _Twins_. He was going to be the father of _twins_. "Wait!" he cried, springing to his feet and sprinting up the stairs after Mrs Weasley. "I'm coming up! I should have been with her from the start."

"Harry, I told you, this is women's business."

"No! She is my wife! She has just given birth to my daughter, she's going to give birth again and I don't give a damn what wizards do—this is what _I_ am doing!"

They were on the same step; he glared down at Mrs Weasley, hoping that he looked intimidating. She couldn't keep eye contact with him and looked away, shaking her head.

"Harry, it's just _not done_. That's so—so—"

"Muggle?" he said, raising his eyebrows.

"Erm, well—" she sputtered. Harry strode up the stairs to the bedroom door.

"While you're thinking about that, my wife is giving birth to another baby, and I don't intend to miss it this time!" He entered the bedroom.

#/#/#

After Harry returned to London from Tilda's house he and Ginny never did have the opportunity to meet up with Luna and Dean at the twins' joke shop in Diagon Alley. That August had been filled with yet more housecleaning at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, while Harry tried to worm more information out of Remus Lupin about what had happened on the night of his sixteenth birthday. Dumbledore never seemed to have the time to talk to him and Harry was _not_ interested in speaking to Snape. He assumed that that would have been fruitless anyway, as Snape never liked Harry knowing too much, it seemed.

But Remus told him exactly what Dumbledore had. Finally, Harry decided to write to Mrs Figg; Dumbledore had said that he shouldn't contact Tilda, not that he shouldn't ask anyone else about her. It took a long time for her to answer, and when she did it sounded like Dumbledore had written the letter for her. Harry tore it up in disgust, trying to work out how he could possibly find out whether Tilda was really all right.

He finally decided to take a chance on writing to his Aunt Petunia; he took up most of the space in the letter asking how she liked the repairs to the house and apologising profusely for the repairs being necessary, hoping she would tell him what he wanted to know. Almost as a postscript to the letter he asked casually about how his old primary school teacher, Miss Harrison, was doing.

Harry had not forgotten how much his aunt liked to gossip. She wrote back promptly, saying that Miss Harrison's house was to let, that she hadn't been seen since the beginning of August, and some people said she'd disappeared before that, as they'd seldom seen her out of doors. Others were saying that she'd contracted a horrid fatal disease and had had to go off to live in a sanitorium somewhere—if she was in fact still alive, for there was no forwarding address on file at the post office and her brother had come to empty out the Little Whinging house.

Harry couldn't believe it. _They'd lied to him_. Tilda wasn't all right; she had died that night and they didn't want to tell him. Or she'd been so badly injured she'd needed to be hospitalised permanently, so Jack had taken care of the contents of her house.

His aunt had evidently not minded using owl post if it gave her the opportunity to spread particularly gloomy gossip. He received the letter just before the first Quidditch match of the season, against Hufflepuff. Harry had gone up on his broom with the others, having been reinstated as the Gryffindor Seeker. Ginny was now playing Chaser. But his heart wasn't in the game.

Tilda was gone and it was all his fault.

#/#/#

"She'll only kick you out!" Molly called after Harry, following him to the bedroom. "I know I would have, if Arthur had tried such a stunt," she continued, an edge to her voice.

Suddenly she stopped short; a milky white figure loomed up abruptly through the stairs and floated a few inches above the stair treads, scrutinising Molly Weasley closely. She backed down a few steps in surprise, her hand fluttering to her chest.

"He just wants to see his wife bringing forth his bairn, Molly," the ghost rasped at her, his silvery magic eye rotating so that he was looking through the back of his head. As far as Ron knew it was all for show, but he didn't know for _certain_ whether Moody could still see out of the back of his (ghostly) head, or through other solid objects. His mother put her hands on her hips and glared at the apparition.

"This is none of your business, Alastor. Let me pass."

The ghost of Mad-Eye Moody shrugged eloquently. "I'm not keeping you from passing, Molly. You are free to go," he said mildly, pointing at the door where Harry had disappeared. When Harry told Ron that Moody had followed him to St Clare's from Hogwarts, Harry had had mixed feelings about it, due to his lingering, nagging guilt. Ron could see that there were other downsides now.

"You know I don't like walking through you," she said crossly, as he was still blocking her way. "You're _cold_."

"You won't try to remove Potter?" he asked her slowly, raising one ghostly eyebrow so that it disappeared into his white-grey bird's nest of insubstantial hair.

She huffed in defeat. "I promise. Now may I—?"

But Moody had already soared away from her and sat on one of the trusses high above the floor that supported the pitched roof. "Of course, Molly. I wouldn't dream of stopping you."

#/#/#

Harry had watched the others zip around the pitch after the Quaffle at that first Quidditch match; he watched Ron block most of the Hufflepuff attempts to score and watched Ginny, Katie Bell and Parvati (the other new Chaser) score on the Hufflepuff Keeper with no feeling of elation, no gladness, now that he knew the truth about Tilda, thanks to his aunt. The world seemed flat and uninteresting to him and he wondered whether anyone would even notice if he just flew off and let the Hufflepuff Seeker catch the Snitch.

But then he caught sight of a quite outlandish thing in the seats: a very large lion's head, roaring loudly when Ron caught the Quaffle once more. It was Luna Lovegood, wearing her Gryffindor hat again, and suddenly Harry's stomach gave a lurch and he felt like he'd woken from a deep sleep. He thought of the things Tilda had said about Luna, and about finding a girl near his own age to be with. He thought about what he could do to honour Tilda's memory.

When Luna didn't come to the Gryffindor common room for the victory party, however, he felt himself slip into gloom again, thinking once more of Cedric, Sirius, Moody, the unknown Muggle and especially Tilda, all dead because of him. Ginny caught him moping in the corner and tried to draw him out with the promise of entertainment. (Ron didn't know that he was about to pop a Chick N'Chocolate into his mouth.) Harry stayed where he was and told her quietly about the letter from his aunt.

She'd gone silent, staring at the carpet, letting him speak, and he was grateful. Unfortunately, Ron had to make too much of it, later going on as though they'd been snogging in front of everyone instead of just sitting quietly and talking. Ginny told Ron she liked him better as a rooster and stormed off to her dormitory while Harry went to bed, thinking about Tilda and Luna and repeatedly getting mixed up in his head about who was who.

Harry knew what he had to do. He finally worked up the nerve to ask Luna to go to Hogsmeade with him, but it didn't work out as planned. She looked blankly at him after he stuttered out the invitation. Harry wondered for a moment whether she was Petrified before she finally spoke, explaining patiently to him, as though he were feeble-minded, that she didn't fancy him.

Even as she spoke a voice in his head demanded of him, _How on earth could you think she was anything like Tilda? Is this how you're going to remember her?_ He looked back at Luna, speechless, wishing he'd never spoken.

Unfortunately, Draco Malfoy stumbled into the Entrance Hall when Luna was turning Harry down and soon the entire school was singing an insulting limerick about Harry fancying Loony Lovegood, who, despite her looniness, at least had the good taste to stay away from Scarhead Potter. It served to distract him from thinking about Tilda (and Sirius and Moody and the others) only a little, and certainly didn't cheer him up, though the newly-arrived ghost of Mad-Eye Moody following Malfoy through the corridors, taunting him about his dad, _was_ a slight bright spot.

On the day of the Hogsmeade trip, he'd wandered aimlessly around the village on his own, trying to ignore Mundungus Fletcher, who was following him while dressed as a woman again. Harry didn't want to intrude on Ron and Hermione's day out together. He started to approach Ginny in the Three Broomsticks, but when Luna brought two butterbeers to the table where Ginny sat, Harry turned on his heel and walked in the other direction; the last thing he needed was for everyone to think he was still pursuing Luna.

#/#/#

Molly Weasley couldn't help smiling at Harry when she entered the bedroom; while a part of her recoiled at this departure from wizarding tradition, another part was softened by the romantic gesture of her daughter's young husband. That it was _Harry_ also helped to soften her. Of course, as far as she was concerned they were both babies, and far too young to be married or have babies themselves. But after he'd proposed and Ginny had accepted Molly had been swept away by the general enthusiasm for the match. She never dreamed that so quickly after the wedding she'd become a grandmother—and through her youngest child! Bill and Fleur had been married a year longer than Harry and Ginny but weren't expecting their first child for another five weeks. Well, she thought, being a parent was far different from being a child. Ginny—and Harry—would quickly learn that. The shoe was on the other foot.

Harry looked up and saw her beaming at him, only a flicker of doubt behind her eyes. She took the squalling baby from Madam Porter and proceeded to wash her while Harry murmured encouragement to Ginny and let her clutch painfully at his hand.

The moment he'd entered the room and seen her face he knew he'd done the right thing. Sweaty ginger tendrils clung to her forehead and her eyes were dark with pain as she rode the wave of each contraction and came closer to delivering their second child. Four years earlier, facing Voldemort on the lawn of Mrs Figg's house, he never would have dreamt that this would be possible—he hadn't even expected to be alive, let alone married and a father—but during the intervening time he'd experienced many surprises, good and bad. As he held her hand firmly he tried to smile reassuringly at her, the nicest surprise he'd had by far.

#/#/#

Since the DA was to be an official school club this meant that anyone who applied had to be admitted, and that included Slytherins. Harry wasn't running it alone but in tandem with the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Carpenter. Harry derived a great deal of satisfaction from being able to tell Draco Malfoy what to do at the meetings. Moody's ghost showed up quite a lot and told people what to do as well, which Harry only minded sometimes, when he remembered that it was _his fault_ that Moody was dead.

That was before the members of the DA began to disappear and the messages, written in blood, appeared again on the walls of the school:

 _The Heir shall rise again and take back what is His._

Ginny denied doing it, but Harry knew that everyone suspected her. He wasn't even certain how anyone had found out what had happened four years earlier, but everyone seemed to know. She told him, Ron and Hermione that she wasn't missing any time, she wasn't writing in any diaries, she knew exactly where she was and what she was doing at all times. She told Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore the same thing. But everyone started avoiding her anyway.

And still the disappearances continued.

Every time there was another disappearance Harry felt Voldemort's glee pass through him and he knew that whoever was doing it was working for _him_. But Harry's behaviour when this occurred—his hysterical laughter disrupted History of Magic once and made everyone cross because he'd woken them from a sound slumber—also led to many people avoiding him. He began to have dreams that he was walking through an empty world, that everyone else had disappeared, that Ron and Hermione were gone, plus Ginny and Neville and Dean and Seamus, and the rest of the Weasleys, and the Hogwarts teachers. He was alone, utterly alone…

The DA stopped meeting. At any rate, the only people attending were Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Neville, since the other four were the only people left in the school who were willing to be in the same room with Harry or Ginny without a teacher present. The Slytherins stopped attending as soon as a _Daily Prophet_ article linked the DA with the disappearances, implying that someone in the club was using meetings to prey upon fellow students. The article hinted strongly that it was Ginny or Harry. (The article also revealed that he laughed hysterically whenever a disappearance occurred.) Again Harry wondered how anyone had found out about what had really happened during Ginny's first year. _He_ had certainly never told anyone. He didn't bother wondering who was telling the _Prophet_ about his Voldemort-induced laughter; it could be anyone in the school, student or teacher, as it had even occurred when he was having meals in the Great Hall.

Somehow, being the school's two outcasts meant that they had been thrown together far more than they ever had been before. Harry wasn't sorry; Ginny was his friend now and a good listener. He didn't imagine, at the time, that they would ever be more than friends.

#/#/#

Ginny grunted and squeezed Harry's hand. When the pain had subsided, he asked, "Ginny, why didn't you tell me it was twins? How could you not have known?"

Ginny bit her lip, her eyes filling with tears. "I'm sorry, Harry. You—you were already so worried about the baby and being a good father. I thought you'd be fretting even more if I told you we were having _two_ babies. I'm sorry."

Harry kissed her brow. "I love you, you know that. You don't have to keep things from me because you think I'll throw a wobbly. It would have been nice to _know_. You always used to tell me everything."

Ginny looked rueful. "Well, not _everything_. I didn't tell you the reason for Dean not fancying me."

"No, you let Dean do that, which was only right. I don't mean that you need to tell me other people's secrets. But this—this shouldn't have been a secret between us."

He couldn't bring himself to chide her further for this, however, as she cried out again and the wave of the contraction went on and on. It seemed to Harry that the time when she'd be out of her agony was further away, not closer, and he wished he could still cheer her up by playing a simple game of Quidditch with her, or just flying about on their brooms.

#/#/#

He'd found her sitting in the library during the Easter holiday, looking as though she'd been crying; she greeted him brightly when she noticed him but it struck a false note. When Harry asked her what was wrong, Ginny admitted that it was Dean. She hadn't talked to Harry much about Dean since the summer, but he had assumed everything was all right. They didn't behave as other couples but seemed friendly enough when they were together. However, he discovered that they never had been a couple, technically. Ginny laughed ruefully, telling him how stupid she'd been, how presumptuous. She'd hung about with him for months, assuming that he fancied her, and he'd finally realised that she thought this and set her straight, mortified that he'd given her the wrong impression.

"So, you don't think it was because—" Harry began tentatively.

"—because he thinks I'm a homicidal maniac? No, I don't think so. _Probably_ not," she added, sounding less sure. "I still feel quite stupid, assuming that he—" She closed her mouth tightly, looking out the window at the bright spring day, and he thought she was perhaps embarrassed and afraid that she might cry again. He put his hand over hers and squeezed.

"Well, I think he's a right idiot," he said stoutly.

She turned and no longer looked like she might cry; instead she looked afraid of something. _Of him_ _?_ He couldn't be sure, but she gently pulled her hand out from under his and held both of her hands together in her lap, thanking him quietly. "He still wants to be friends and all that," she said hurriedly. "He said he's really sorry if he misled me. I told him it was my fault, that I was just incredibly thick."

"I still think _he's_ the idiot," Harry said, swallowing, feeling strange, both like he wanted to run away and never leave this spot at the same time. When Ginny stood and said she wanted to go flying he went with her, though he had a nagging feeling that she had wanted to do this alone. But after flying around the pitch for a while, then fetching a Quaffle so that Harry could help her practice for the Quidditch final, they were laughing and windblown, and he thought that just maybe she'd forgotten about her heartbreak over Dean for a little while.

#/#/#

"Come on, Ginny, you can do it!" Harry encouraged her.

"You're nearly there!" Madam Porter told her. "You already did it once."

Her face was screwed up in pain and concentration; when she stopped and panted for breath the midwife informed her again that she was nearly there.

"Nearly?" Ginny snapped. "What do you mean by _nearly_? Am I going to get this bloody baby out of me once and for all or _not_?"

"Now, now, dear," Molly said, clucking her tongue and mopping Ginny's brow with a soft flannel. "You don't want to speak that way to Madam Porter. She helped me deliver you, she did, and all of your brothers. And if you want her to help you the next time—"

" _Next time_?" Ginny howled, pushing her mother's hand away. "You think there's going to be a _next_ time? There's no way I'm doing _this_ again!" she said adamantly.

Harry felt a slight pang at her words, but he saw the pain in her eyes and kissed the hand that he held. "That's fine with me, Ginny. We don't need to have more babies."

"That's _fine_ with you? _Fine_? If it weren't, did you think you could _force_ me to do this again?" she said, her voice rising on a screech. Harry swallowed.

"Erm, no, of course not," he said quickly, hoping with all his might that the second baby would be born _very soon_. "It'll all be over soon, Ginny," he said, trying to sound confident. "You faced _him_ twice, we both did, and you can do this twice too. And then after that, never again."

#/#/#

When Harry and Ginny returned to the Gryffindor common room together just after dark, Harry fully expected Ron to tease them about being together again, and Harry decided that he'd show Ron for once and pretend that they _had_ been off together, doing something other than playing Quidditch. But just as he entered the room his scar sent a searing pain through his head and the hysterical laughter threatened to rise to the surface once more. It was worse than before and Harry thought his head would explode from the pain. After it finally subsided he wasn't a bit surprised that Ron passed up the opportunity for prime matchmaking-teasing; his face was gloomier than Harry had seen it in a long time as he gave them the news:

The Quidditch final was cancelled.

Harry had already guessed, from how overjoyed Voldemort was, that more students had disappeared. Katie Bell and Parvati Patil had gone missing, and half the Ravenclaw team as well. More messages about the Heir appeared on the walls of the castle. That night, in a dream, he saw Nott, the thin, quiet Slytherin boy, looking blankly at him before falling backward and appearing to be comatose. The tips of the fingers on his left hand were black. And in the background was a voice, a familiar voice, taunting Harry…

The next morning Nott wasn't in the Great Hall for breakfast and when Harry went to Snape to ask where Nott was, Snape told him snidely not to worry; he was in the hospital wing, he hadn't disappeared like the others. Only then did Harry realise that Slytherin house alone had been exempt from the disappearances. He went to the hospital wing to see Nott, finding him looking exactly as he had in his dream, down to the black-tipped fingers of his left hand. He was white as a sheet otherwise, barely breathing. His suspicions were confirmed. Harry had seen someone look like this before.

He knew what had happened.

However, by then the board of governors had stepped in and decided to close the school. Neville, Luna and numerous other students were removed by their families. Dumbledore went to meet with the governors in an attempt to change their minds. And then Ron and Hermione disappeared and the Ministry sent Aurors for Ginny. Harry knew she had nothing to do with what had been happening and was torn between rescuing her, to keep her safe, and rescuing the others, for he now thought he knew where they were (assuming that they were alive).

He told Professor Carpenter what he thought had happened and Carpenter recommended that they combine these missions; they went together with Ginny to the girls' bathroom and entered the Chamber of Secrets, where, sure enough, they found the missing students, some nearly starved. They summoned brooms to get them out of the chamber, but when Harry and Ginny emerged from the Chamber with Carpenter, they found Aurors waiting for them. They'd been looking for Ginny and someone had led them to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

 _Draco Malfoy._

McGonagall was there too, as the acting headmistress, since Dumbledore was still meeting with the governors. Harry quickly explained to her what had happened, that it was all Malfoy's doing. To his surprise, Professor Carpenter stopped him.

"We have no proof, Potter, that Malfoy has done anything." He turned to Draco Malfoy, his tawny-grey locks whirling as he did so. "I assume that you brought the Aurors here, Mr Malfoy, because you suspected that Miss Weasley had returned to the entrance of the Chamber?"

"Yes!" Draco Malfoy proclaimed, looking quite pleased that a professor was backing him up. "Thanks to me everyone knew that she opened the Chamber last time. _I_ knew that she'd probably done it again!" Carpenter nodded sagely, his hand on Malfoy's shoulder. Harry was horrified.

"Ginny _can't_ open the Chamber! You need to be a Parselmouth to do it."

Malfoy smirked. "I think we know who helped her then, _don't_ we _Parselmouth Potter_?"

"You only knew about Ginny and the Chamber because of your dad!" Harry cried, furious. "He's the one who made it happen, _not_ Ginny and _not_ me! Your _Death Eater_ dad!"

Kingsley hesitated; other than Tonks, the Aurors did not look moved by Harry's story. McGonagall demanded the right, as deputy headmistress, to question him and Ginny in the headmaster's study before releasing them to the Ministry. Kingsley was in charge of the Aurors present, including Tonks, and he granted this request nervously, noticing how restive the others were. Harry thought something in his face seemed to say that he was on the same page as McGonagall but also worried about his position in the Ministry. Carpenter took Malfoy off to his study to talk to him, nodding his leonine head sagely as Malfoy ranted about Potter having it in for him; only when Harry met Professor Carpenter's amber eyes behind his wire-rimmed spectacles for a moment, before he loped off with Malfoy, did Harry realise what he was really doing.

Once they were in the tower study, McGonagall lost no time in summoning their brooms so that they might escape, as she didn't doubt Harry's version of events in the least. The brooms came soaring in the open windows but Harry knew that this alone was not the answer. He and Ginny flew up to the West Tower while McGonagall stalled the Aurors. Once on the tower he summoned something else. When it came soaring up to them Ginny gasped. It was Riddle's diary, which had been repaired, as Harry had suspected. He opened it and began to write:

 _This is Harry Potter, Riddle. It was Nott who wrote in the diary, wasn't it? Somehow Malfoy or his mum repaired it and Malfoy gave it to him, didn't he?_

"Yes, Harry, he did," came a familiar voice behind him.

Harry turned to see Tom Riddle for the second time in his life. Riddle laughed at him, at how thin Harry still was four years later, the fact that he wasn't a prefect, and at how he'd failed to keep the school from closing, which would mean that Voldemort could take it over and make it his own, using it as a staging ground for conquering the wizarding world. When Riddle made lewd remarks to Ginny about how she _had_ changed Harry felt a murderous rage move through him.

Ginny snatched up the diary, tossing it to Harry and hopping onto her broom, urging him to follow. They would destroy the diary once and for all and no one could ever use it again. Harry followed her swiftly, but Riddle had acquired a wand—probably from Nott—and he summoned Harry's broom while he was twisting around to look behind him. He lost his grip and started falling, losing the diary as he fell. The ground was rushing up at him, up, up, up—

And then, with a jerk that took his breath away, Ginny grabbed his robes, struggling to keep hold of him. There were tears running down her face as they landed and Harry lay on the ground beside her looking at her in amazement, not quite processing the fact that she'd just saved his life. As they lay on the grass their faces were very close together, which was the only reason he could hear the words she gasped out:

"Just—like—Ron—when—Malfoy—tried—to—" She took great gulping breaths. "I—couldn't—bear—to—let—that—happen—again—could've—died—"

Harry didn't answer her, just looked at her as though he'd memorise her face. His heart was hammering in his head and their faces were still very close together, and growing closer. "Ginny," he gasped; "you—you saved my life."

She looked frightened again, like the day in the library. "Well," she whispered, "I reckon that—that the shoe's on the other foot. We're even now." It seemed that they were looking at each other for a long time when her eyes suddenly widened. "The diary!" Ginny gasped suddenly, springing up. It was on the ground about twenty feet away. Riddle stood beside it, laughing. Harry summoned it again but Riddle continued to laugh.

"When are you going to admit that you've lost, Potter? You've no basilisk tooth this time. And when I add my power to my older self, you two and the rest of the wizarding world shall know what true fear—"

" _Evanesco!_ " Harry cried, ignoring him and pointing his wand at the diary, which suddenly and silently vanished. Riddle also disappeared suddenly and silently, in mid-sentence. Harry sat on the ground, hard, staring at Ginny, hardly daring to believe that the nightmare was over. He was still breathing rather hard from the excitement, and as he sat beside Ginny it seemed that their faces were very close again…

Professor McGonagall was striding across the lawn with Kingsley and the other Aurors. Harry and Ginny scrambled to their feet and told them what had happened. Kingsley's colleagues were disbelieving until they reached the hospital wing, where Nott had awoken upon the destruction of the diary. He began to tell them everything.

After the students who had been trapped in the Chamber were in good health again Dumbledore allowed the Quidditch final to go on, which Gryffindor won. Harry searched for Ginny in the jubilant crowd; he thought he saw her well ahead of him, being carried by a laughing Neville Longbottom, which made him laugh as well. Ron was in his element again and Harry was surprised by still more good news when he returned to the castle.

Peter Pettigrew had been captured by the Ministry. He had confessed to everything and had posthumously cleared Sirius's name. Harry was shocked and wanted to know how.

"It was you, Harry, who gave me the idea," Dumbledore told him in his study. Harry was missing the celebration party, but he hardly minded. "You said months ago that it was too bad that Professor Trelawney's _other_ genuine prophecy had already been fulfilled. I admit that I had forgotten utterly about that. I spoke to a friend in the Department of Mysteries and discovered exactly where the record of that prophecy was kept. Luckily, it had not been damaged during your visit to the Department last year. It was properly labelled as having been given by Sybill to you, and also that it concerned Pettigrew and Voldemort. All I needed to do then was tell Tom—in my roundabout way—that it existed and that Pettigrew was the one who could touch it. Naturally, he sent him to the Ministry to retrieve it, not knowing that it was of extreme unimportance, as prophecies go. Though I must say—Pettigrew was surprisingly calm about being apprehended."

"He wanted to be caught," Harry whispered, a strange feeling in his stomach.

"Perhaps," Dumbledore said cautiously. "It remains to be seen whether we shall learn anything useful from him."

But knowing that his parents' betrayer, the man who'd framed Sirius, was in prison at last did not make Harry as happy as he'd once thought it would. He found himself watching Ginny repeatedly during the remaining days in the term, wondering where she was when she wasn't in the Gryffindor common room or had already left the table during meals in the Great Hall. However, he didn't know what he would say to her if they _were_ alone. He thought about how she'd held her head up when the entire school had turned against her, feeling proud of this for no reason he could name. Suddenly he felt tongue-tied around her and as though he had too many hands and feet. He also felt that he'd never properly thanked her for saving his life.

He, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny and Luna once more shared a compartment on the train back to London. Harry avoided Ginny's eye on the trip and was grateful that Neville was spending so much time engaging her in conversation. He spoke awkwardly to Luna while she gazed, unperturbed, at Ron. Hermione gave her the evil eye.

Harry was returning to the Dursleys for the last time, something he would never again have to endure. He hoped that Aunt Marge wouldn't visit this year, or at least that she would wait until he'd left the house for good. It seemed much longer than only a year since he'd last made this journey, full of grief and guilt over Sirius. He didn't feel like the same person. He hung back and was one of the last people off the train.

What surprised him was that Ginny also hung back. She was still on the platform, awkwardly juggling her rucksack, her broom and the handle of the trolley that held her trunk. Harry called to her to wait, pulling his trolley with his trunk and Hedwig's cage after him, nearly making the cage crash onto the tracks. He was still trying to catch his breath when he reached her. At the look on his face she stopped dead, releasing her trolley's handle.

"What—what is it, Harry?" she asked, her voice shaking.

"I—I never—what I mean is—you saved my life, and—" He stared at her; she looked up at him, very still. She seemed to be waiting for something. He leaned forward suddenly and kissed her on the mouth, very quickly. When he had pulled back she looked at him strangely. "I never—never thanked you properly," he tried to explain. Ginny dropped her rucksack and broom and put her hand in his, stepping closer to him.

"You call that thanking me properly?" she whispered. He didn't hesitate this time; the second time he kissed her his arms wound about her and her hands slid up his arms to twine around his neck; he decided that it was _completely_ unlike kissing Cho, but just at the point that he started to worry about her being bored, or checking her watch, she suddenly sprang back from him and covered her mouth in horror. That was definitely _not_ how he wanted her to respond.

A moment later he jumped in surprise as Neville Longbottom came back through the barrier. "There you are, Ginny!" he said brightly. "Come on, then! They're waiting to meet you! You're my first girlfriend, so all of them have come—Uncle Algie, Aunt Enid, and Gran, of course. I know you met Gran before, but that was really fast, that time at St Mungo's."

Harry dropped his jaw, staring at the pair of them in shock. Ginny looked even more horrified than she had after she had pulled away from him. Neville laughed and took Ginny's rucksack and broom from her, clasping her other hand as she resumed pulling her trolley. As she followed him to the barrier, she turned and mouthed to Harry, _I'm so sorry! I forgot!_

He watched them go helplessly, then had to withstand hearing Neville introduce her to his grandmother as his _girlfriend_ while he was getting into the Dursleys' car. Ginny looked back at Harry in distress before nervously turning to shake Mrs Longbottom's hand.

#/#/#

"Here she comes!" the midwife cried while Harry held Ginny's hand and their second daughter entered the world. It all passed in a blur for Harry. Before he knew it, he was holding their younger daughter and Ginny was proudly holding their firstborn while Ron, Neville, Hermione and Luna burst in upon them, exclaiming over the babies and making Mrs Weasley and Madam Porter scold them for being noisy.

When they were preparing for bed that night it hardly seemed real; Ginny nursed the babies one at a time, sitting in bed beside Harry, who leaned his head on her shoulder and watched the identical little mouths suck, the identical round cheeks moving quickly.

"Aren't you glad you told Neville that you realised you didn't fancy him after all?" he whispered as he watched his firstborn fall asleep in his arms. Her long lashes were very black on her pale cheeks.

Ginny laughed wearily. "When did you think I wasn't glad? He took it well enough. And it made him realise that he still fancied Hermione, so it was all for the best."

"I'm not sure he thought so until Ron had that huge row with Hermione and broke up with her."

Ginny laughed, then winced as the younger baby gave her breast a tug. "I'm not sure I thought that was all for the good, either, at the time. How many months was it before they spoke to each other again?"

They sat in bed together, talking over old times and the times to come, admiring their daughters and feeling like a real family.

#/#/#

When Ron Apparated to the graveyard at St Clare's again a week later he wasn't alone; Luna, Neville, Hermione and Parvati had already appeared and were walking up the drive toward the entry. He jogged slightly to catch up to them and Harry looked slightly taken aback to find all of them on his doorstep in a crowd when he opened the door.

Ron shook his head as he scraped his boots on the mat and Neville waited to do the same. The women went ahead into the drawing room, carrying gifts. A moment later they were exclaiming over the babies. Though she was carrying two small packages, Parvati also offered to do an astrological chart for each child; she had a thriving business as a medium in Diagon Alley, renting a small shop across from Fred and George's much larger establishment and living in a flat above the shop.

"Rather inconvenient, this Apparating to the graveyard, Harry, don't you think?" Ron said to his best friend. "And I still say it's bloody gloomy to land in the middle of a lot of tombstones as well. I don't see why we couldn't Apparate right into the house."

"Ron," Harry said, accepting a baby gift from Neville, "we don't want people literally _popping in_. This is more secure. We have anti-Apparation jinxes on the house."

"Well then, put your fire on the bloody Floo network. At _least_ you can do that for talking to people, even if you refuse to do it for transportation," he grumbled, entering the drawing room. Ginny and Harry's fireplace was unlike any he'd ever seen, a square assembled from large flat stones topped by slabs of granite, about seven feet to a side, sitting dead centre in the room with what looked like a large copper funnel over it; a very long copper flue ran up through the enormous space and out through the roof, high overhead. Squashy sofas and armchairs were arranged around one side of the fire while a long dining table and chairs sat on the other. The open kitchen occupied the raised space at the front of the former sanctuary where sermons would once have been given, a few steps up from the dining table.

"We don't want people's _heads_ just popping in for a visit either," Ginny said testily as she held one of the babies in her arms.

"Yes, Ron, try joining the twenty-first century and using a telephone. We prefer it, frankly," Harry said, throwing himself onto the couch between Ginny and Hermione, who held the other baby. "We got mobiles for your mum and dad. To save trouble with the Muggle post the bills come to us. We could do that for you as well, but you'd have to reimburse us."

"Actually," Hermione piped up, "we're not _in_ the twenty-first century yet. It won't actually start until the beginning of next—" She froze, seeing their faces, and turned red. "Sorry. I'm doing it again."

But Harry laughed and brushed his lips over the downy head of the baby she held. "It's all right, Hermione. But you understand, surely? You have a mobile. You call us."

"What about the kids?" Ron cut in, feeling cross that he couldn't even use Floo to call his sister and best mate but needed a Muggle contraption. "I mean—what are they called?"

Ginny and Harry looked at each other. "Well," Harry admitted, "we're still working on that, to be honest." The others were horrified. "We were always going to call a girl after Hagrid—"

"Ugh!" Ron said immediately. "You're going to call one of them _Hagrid_? Are you _trying_ to make my niece a social outcast before she can even walk or talk?"

Ginny sighed and rolled her eyes. "His name was _Rubeus_ , you git. The oldest one is called _Ruby_ ," she said, indicating the baby she was holding.

"Oh, that's _lovely_ ," Hermione breathed, rocking the other baby gently in her arms and cooing to her. She beamed at Neville. "Don't you think this is as good a time as any to tell them—?"

Neville's round face went bright red; sitting on the arm of the couch and putting an arm around Hermione's shoulders as she held the baby, he looked round at the others, as though the baby were _their_ newborn child. "We'd like you all to know that Hermione and I are going to be married."

Harry, Ginny and Parvati hugged and kissed them both and Luna seemed _very_ happy. Ron bashfully hugged Hermione and shook Neville's hand while Neville said sheepishly to him, "No hard feelings, Ron?" as though he weren't quite certain.

Ron had a strange feeling in his stomach as he looked at the two of them and said, "No, of course not. Why should there be?"

#/#/#

Harry heard this and looked at his two best friends; somehow, from the look on Hermione's face, he thought that she seemed to think there _should_ be "hard feelings". She glared at Luna, who gazed back at her blankly.

"Congratulations, Hermione," Luna said flatly. She insinuated herself onto the edge of the ottoman where Ron sat and took his arm possessively as she spoke; Ron looked like he had acquired a parasite he wished to be rid of.

"Maybe someday soon we'll be getting the same news from the pair of you," Hermione said pointedly, her eyes meeting Ron's.

"Maybe," Ron said noncommittally.

"Well, you're already working for her dad," Parvati pointed out. "Mr Lovegood must approve of you to have taken you on."

"And Daddy has never paid anyone for their articles before," Luna pointed out, holding tighter to Ron's arm. Harry thought he saw Ron wince and decided that he should rescue his best friend before this went any further.

"We still need help naming our other daughter!" he reminded them, taking the small bundle from a reluctant Hermione. "We had one girl's name picked out and one boy's, not two for girls."

"Well," Ron began gamely, looking grateful to Harry, "you have a Ruby. That's one Gryffindor colour: red. The other one is gold. There you go! Easy. She'll be Goldie."

Ginny made a face. "She's a little girl, Ron, not a retriever."

"There are people called Goldie," Ron said defensively. "Probably," he added with less certainty.

"Something _else_ ," Harry said quickly, seeing the look on Ginny's face.

"Something that _means_ gold might not be a bad idea," Hermione said. "There are other options. _Amber_ is a sort of gold colour, and they're both gems, in a way."

Harry frowned. "Ruby and Amber. I don't really—"

" _Aura_ ," Luna said suddenly. "You know, a golden glow is like an _aura_."

"No, it isn't," Hermione said icily. "It's—"

"Wait!" Parvati said suddenly. " _Aurora_. It's the goddess of the dawn. She brings the sun's golden light."

"And it's sort of the feminine of _Auror_ ," Ginny added, clearly enthusiastic about this.

Harry kissed the top of his unnamed daughter's head and said, "If you think you'll talk me into going back to Auror training, Ginny, I won't. I told you. I don't want anything to take me away from you and our girls."

She sighed and said, "I know, Harry. I just wish you had something else to occupy your time. You still haven't found anything else you're half so interested in." There was an embarrassed silence; the others could tell that this was a conversation they'd had had more than once.

"So," Ron said, breaking the awkward silence. "Aurora. A bit grand if you ask me, for such a little thing. How about Rory for short?"

"That's perfect!" Neville proclaimed. "Ruby and Rory!"

The name stuck and soon Harry could no longer remember what his life was like before Ruby and Rory Potter had come into it. Before he and Ginny knew it, the twins were toddling around the tombstones outside St Clare's Chapel, just as Harry had told Ron they would. When they were old enough for him to explain to them what the stones were, it didn't bother them in the least, as he'd hoped.

Several years later he didn't even realise that he was feeling at loose ends when Dumbledore appeared in the graveyard silently, surprising Harry. He gave lemon lollies to the girls, who'd been frolicking around a large obelisk while Harry supervised. He didn't expect to accept when Dumbledore offered him—and Ginny—the opportunity to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts. But he did, and after thinking about it for a few days, Ginny did as well.

Harry was excited; he'd enjoyed teaching his fellow students in the DA. Now he had the opportunity to do the same thing as a real teacher. He and Ginny would be a team, which would allow them to each spend time with the twins in their private quarters, though they would also engage a nanny for times when they both needed to be absent from their daughters.

When September came, they closed up St Clare's and the Potters moved to Hogwarts.

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	20. Harry Redux

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Twenty**

 **Harry Redux**

 **#/#/#**

"Are you sure you don't need help?" Hermione asked Harry nervously as she watched him float the frying pan from the cooker to the kitchen table. After the cast-iron pan finally landed with a clanging thud Harry sat opposite Hermione.

"I'm fine. It's just that I don't know where Ginny's put the—you know," he floundered. "Those bloody things for carrying hot pots. Which I can't summon without knowing what they're called." He pointed at the pan. "I don't have a lot of finesse as a cook, but it's always edible. Or nearly always," he added with a grimace. "The girls won't let me do porridge anymore. But I can do toasted cheese sandwiches without a problem," he said, nodding at the pan.

Casting about for a utensil to remove her sandwich and trying not to touch the pan, she ended up sliding her knife under the bread, tugging on it. Smiling feebly at Harry, she said, "Mm. Smells delicious. It's just—a little stuck—" She finally extracted it and dropped it quickly onto her plate; Harry was already grasping his in one hand, fingernails a bit on the grubby side, and downing pumpkin juice between large bites.

"What did you want to talk about? We could have gone out for lunch—the Leaky Cauldron, perhaps," she suggested, beginning to primly cut her sandwich into small squares; stabbing a piece with her fork, she put it into her mouth and began to chew slowly just as Harry popped the last fragment of his sandwich into his mouth.

"No thanks. It's a madhouse there today. Too many Hogwarts shopping expeditions at this time of summer, which often includes _Snape_. Last time I went I ran into him with a Muggle-born family and he was crosser than ever because of that." Harry smiled ruefully. "I think he forgot about that part of the job when Minerva offered him the deputy post after Dumbledore retired. Those of us who've only been teaching for a few years can usually get out of things like that—I know that _I'm_ always 'previously engaged'—but if no one else is available the deputy hasn't any choice."

Hermione could tell that the thought of Snape having to endure clueless Muggle families was rather amusing to Harry, even if running into the Potions master in Diagon Alley wasn't.

"Ginny and the girls left for Flourish and Blotts about an hour ago; she's making sure the new text we ordered for sixth and seventh years is in stock. Rory also still has a bit of her birthday money and wants to go to the stationer's to buy some of that ink I like that changes colours, and Ruby will probably be staring in the window of The Magical Menagerie, wishing she could own all of their most dangerous creatures." He sighed and looked covetously at Hermione's sandwich.

Hermione smiled as she put her knife and fork down. "It really is as though she's channelling Hagrid sometimes, isn't it?"

Harry didn't look happy about this, however. "Yes, and I don't mean that in a good way. We don't know what to do with her anymore. The last time all four of us went to Diagon Alley she found a _Cruppie_."

"A what?" Hermione said, frowning.

"A Cruppie. Well, that's what I call it. A Crup puppy. It was a stray; she stuffed it into her bag and we had no idea she'd picked it up until we'd already got off the Knight Bus and were walking up the drive."

"Are you letting her keep it? I've never seen one in person, only pictures, but they seem quite cute. I always liked Jack Russell terriers."

"It _isn't_ a Jack Russell, Hermione. It's a hell-hound," he grumbled.

The corners of her mouth were turned up slightly as she put her fork in her mouth again. After she chewed and swallowed she said, "Surely it's not _that_ bad, Harry. And we've _seen_ a hell-hound at close range. Remember Fluffy?" She drained her pumpkin juice and went to get more from the fridge; Harry made an angry sound in his throat and when she turned around with her filled glass she nearly dropped it in shock. What appeared to be a small Jack Russell terrier with a split tail stood on his hind legs on her chair, picking up the uneaten half of her sandwich in his mouth before bounding away with it.

Harry looked at her; she still had her mouth open. "No, surely it's not _that_ bad, Hermione," he intoned, rolling his eyes. "It's all we can do to get our post. Muggle post, that is. I'd forgotten how much Crups hate Muggles until the first time after Ruby brought him home and the postman was trying to make a delivery. Ron was here, of course, so he started going on again about 'That's what you get if you want to live like a Muggle, with electricity and a telephone,' and so on. Without all that we'd never need to get the Muggle post, you see. Bills." He grimaced. "I felt like hexing him to remind him that I haven't given up magic on principle, even though I—" He stopped, a rather grim expression on his face before he turned to stare at the stained glass window over the sink, which depicted three women standing by an empty tomb, confronted by a white-clad angel; the sun behind the glass made the angel glow eerily. Hermione didn't think he was actually seeing it, though; his mind seemed to be elsewhere.

She sighed. "I don't suppose it occurred to you to stop him taking my food? Or was that to illustrate your point? Haven't you ever heard of _training_? Show him who's boss, teach him what is and isn't acceptable, such as not attacking the postman. I had to do that with Crookshanks. Well, he didn't attack the postman. Of course, he's rather like an ancient ginger throw rug these days, poor old man. A fifteen-year-old cat doesn't get up to much." She took a sip of her pumpkin juice and looked at him over the rim of her glass.

"Cat-Kneazle hybrid," Harry corrected her. "Be grateful he's not _all_ Kneazle, like Mrs Norris. That damn animal doesn't just terrorise the students, she still terrorises the teachers as well. When will she _die_? She's been around _forever_."

Hermione shrugged. "I don't know. I think Crookshanks is likely to live longer than a typical cat, but I don't know what that will mean. He certainly doesn't _exert_ himself. At any rate, there's still the training issue for—what's the dog's name?"

" _Crup._ Please don't dignify that thing with the title of 'dog,'" Harry said with a shudder. " _Fang_ was a dog. Even Fluffy was a dog, of sorts." Hermione waited to see whether he would mention Sirius, but he did not, though she noticed that he hesitated for a moment, as if thinking about it. "And you wouldn't _believe_ what she wants to call it: _Hades_. Not that it's not appropriate for that animal. But why not just call it 'Satan' or 'Beelzebub' and have done with it?"

"Actually, Hades wasn't evil, just the god of the under—" Hermione stopped, her face feeling warm. Harry grinned.

"I'm supposed to be the teacher now, remember?" he said, poking her arm playfully, but she looked more sober, not less, when he did this.

"Harry—I'm assuming that you didn't ask me to come for lunch so you could give me a burnt sandwich and feed half of it Ruby's pet Crup. Something's wrong. I can tell."

"Erm, sorry about the food. Perhaps we have some takeaway curry in the fridge; we always seem to…"

" _Harry._ "

He spread his hands on the old wooden table, staring at the empty frying pan between them as though he found it fascinating. "It's Ruby. Her smuggling the Cruppie home is really just the tip of the iceberg. We don't know what to do with her. It's baffling; I was somewhat prepared for a repeat of Fred and George, twins who were partners in crime, always pulling pranks. But Rory's a little angel. The moment you ask her to do anything—it's done. Ask her a question and you get a full, polite answer. Ask Ruby to do anything and she wants to get into a debate about whether she _should_ , or _can_ do it, or she wants to negotiate _terms_. Ask a question and you get a grunt, some made-up sign-language, or she changes the subject to avoid answering altogether. I'm at my wit's end, and so is Ginny. And if Moody jumps in—as he always will—and tells her off for not obeying her parents, she tells him to bugger off. She's only eight years old, Hermione!"

"Well, once she's a Hogwarts student her parents will be there, teaching, so she knows that if Minerva tells her she's going to have a meeting with her parents it isn't an idle threat. It'll certainly be easy enough."

"I don't mean how are we going to _threaten_ her into doing what she should. That hasn't worked so far," he grumbled, slumping in his chair and crossing his arms. "I never thought being a father would be so—"

"—challenging?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I don't get it. For twins they're so different. It's just a damn good thing we can tell them apart or Ruby would try to exploit _that_ for her schemes."

Hermione smiled. "You did get lucky there. I think Molly _still_ can't tell Fred and George apart. She just has to go with the fifty-fifty odds that her guess is the right one. They go out of their way to have identical haircuts, of course, just to be difficult. At least you get to say, 'Oh, your left eye is green and your right is brown, so you're Rory, and your left eye is brown and your right is green, so you're Ruby.'"

Harry grimaced. "Maybe that's why they're so different; they're mirror images. Rory got all of the good behaviour genes and Ruby got the misbehaving ones." He sighed loudly. "It's all my fault. I wish I hadn't been such a rule-breaker when I was a kid. Now Ruby's just like me and I haven't a clue how to deal with her. I reckon I deserve it." When Hermione laughed he jerked his head up, puzzled. "What's so funny?"

"What's so funny? You've got it completely backward, that's what's funny. Harry, good little Rory is _you_ all over again. I know you don't think of yourself that way, but it's amazing, after the rotten way your family treated you, that you showed up at Hogwarts all, 'Yes, sir, no sir, may I please, sir.' Ron was, of course, a terrible influence on you and by your fifth year you were capable of being _quite_ rude when you wanted to be," she added with a sniff. "But _Ruby_ —she's Ginny all over again. Don't you remember my telling you about how she'd been sneaking into the broom shed since she was six? And remember that time she was sent to bed and was screaming all up and down the house?"

Harry grinned. "At the time I thought—well, she wasn't taking it lying down. Good on her. I didn't think of it as bad behaviour. I wouldn't have taken it, either."

"Yes, you would have, Harry. Because what you did when _you_ were told to go upstairs wasn't anything like what Ginny did. You went. You didn't go happily, but you went, without the histrionics. Now, Ginny is my friend and I love her dearly, but you're right—she doesn't take things lying down. And neither does Ruby. Perhaps you need to see her as a younger version of your wife—whom I know you love—to _appreciate_ her."

"I appreciate her! I just don't know how to _raise_ her," he said in exasperation.

Hermione shrugged. "I'll talk to her, spend some more time with her. Is that why you asked me to come here? To see whether Auntie Hermione could lend a hand? Perhaps I should take her to work with me next week, show her what I do."

Harry tried his hardest not to make a face. "Erm, don't you think she'd be a bit bored watching you engaging in elf labour negotiations all day?"

She sighed. "That's not all I do. I also investigate reports of wizards who've put restraining and self-punishment spells on their elves, or who refuse to pay them in a timely fashion or give them their benefits. None of which is easy. The investigating, I mean." She sighed again and looked at her empty plate; her stomach rumbled audibly. "You know, I have a couple of nice domestic elves looking for work. They could help you out around here; their wages are quite reasonable."

Harry laughed. "All right, all right. Why don't we drive into the village and I'll get you a proper lunch at the pub? Will that do?"

She sighed again, this time with relief. "That sounds lovely. I think I hear a steak-and-kidney pie calling me, and a nice pint."

#/#/#

Severus Snape glanced at the letterbox, then down at the parchment in his hand. _Latere Farm_. Yes, he had the right place. He looked down the long drive, beech trees arching overhead. At the end he could see a large, rambling farmhouse; it seemed a civilised enough place. He hoped that the family wouldn't take his news poorly.

This wasn't the first time he'd visited a Muggle family to discuss their magical child. He'd accepted that he could no longer escape this burden, as he had consistently for years, when Minerva had named him her deputy. She'd done it often enough, surely, when Sprout, Hooch or one of the others was unavailable. He sighed as he began to walk down the road; it was a different story entirely to inform a family that they did not have a Muggle-born magical child but a half-blood one. He felt like hexing wizards who went about "seeding" young Muggle women, no thought at all for whether the women might find themselves raising a witch or wizard with no idea of how to handle the child. Most of the time the Don Juans hadn't told the women they were wizards and departed without a word. The wizards got off without having to take care of their children in any way while Snape or another Hogwarts teacher was saddled with visiting the families when the children were only a month away from entering magic school, so that it could be explained that, in addition to being a blighter, the child's father had also neglected to mention that he was a wizard.

He'd encountered hostility more than once. He didn't blame the poor abandoned women; more than once, the children had been living in what he considered to be sub-human conditions. But despite understanding the root of the hostility, he didn't relish the idea of having to defend himself, without magic, from an irate woman swinging an umbrella or handbag at him, nor being screamed at for an hour about the pillock who was the child's father.

When Minerva had told him that the other teachers were "indisposed" and there was no response to one of the Hogwarts letters sent to a first-year who was down in the book as a half-blood, Severus had not shown any response in his features; he knew his duty. He'd already visited about half the new Muggle-born students. Now it was time to clean up the odds and ends and attend to the students who were not Muggle-born but had not yet replied to their Hogwarts letters.

Severus drew closer to the farmhouse, which was the same yellow colour as the dust of the unpaved road on which he walked. A neat thatched roof ranged over the long, low rambling house and window boxes spilled a profusion of colourful flowers down the timber-and-daub walls. Off to the side were a stable and a fenced-in paddock where some rather worn-looking horses grazed lazily. In another paddock beside that one some sheep wandered about stupidly, occasionally nibbling at the grass. An overexcited border collie barked and nipped at their heels.

He was unaccustomed to visiting a setting like this, having become far more familiar with trudging through slums. While council housing was neither falling to bits nor luxurious, much of it did tend toward being rather run-down. And many of the unwed mothers of half-blood children didn't even bother trying to get council flats or cottages. _Ah, well. Women of any social class can be taken in by a clever wizard._ He'd never attempted an assignation with a Muggle woman, and he hadn't been with a witch for almost six years. It was hard for him to believe that it was already ten years since the Dark Lord had fallen. He set his mouth into a hard, uncompromising line. _These people are lucky they're not entering the wizarding world of those dark years._

He finally stood before the red-painted door, swallowing and taking a deep breath before knocking. After a minute, the door was opened by a heavy-set young woman with messy brown hair. She examined him critically; he was dressed as he always was for these trips: black trousers and shirt, black Muggle jacket rather than robes, his hair pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck.

"What do you want, Father?" she demanded when he didn't speak immediately.

He frowned. "Father?"

She nodded at him. "Well, it's a bit hot, so I see you took off your dog collar, but I still know a priest when I see one."

Severus tried not to choke. "No, miss, I am not a priest. I just happen to be wearing black garments. This _is_ Latere Farm, is it not?"

"Yeah," she said slowly, her eyes narrowing. "Who wants to know?"

"I am Severus Snape, the deputy headmaster at the school Theodore will attend in September. We did not receive a—a reply to Theodore's acceptance letter so I have come to talk to him about the school."

She nodded. "Yeah, Teddy said he got a school letter of some sort. Didn't say which school, though. He was pretty excited, too. Can't imagine why he wouldn't have written back. All right, come in then. You can wait in the sitting room while I get his mum."

Severus was shaken. "Then—you're not his mother."

She sniffed. "I'm the housekeeper. Come on, come on. I'll tell her to shake a leg."

"Thank you," he said uncertainly, following her into the house. The flagstones in the hall had been worn at the edges from what appeared to be centuries of constant use. A jumble of Wellington boots littered the corner and jackets and umbrellas hung on hooks near the boots; all of these things were covered with a layer of dust. The ceiling was oppressively low, obviously built when people did not grow to be very tall. Severus had to duck when going through the doorway to the sitting room.

"I'll put on a spot of tea," the housekeeper announced before leaving him. Naturally attracted to the most uncomfortable-looking seat in the room, Severus sat awkwardly in the middle of a stiff horsehair sofa, his large hands folded in his lap. Other than his seat, it appeared to be a comfortable room, with another sofa that looked far squashier and more forgiving sitting perpendicular to his, facing the empty fireplace. Reading lamps were placed conveniently nearby on tables piled with books and plants. A cat was curled on the brightly-coloured hearth rug; it had not yet taken notice of a stranger being in its house and continued to sleep. Small chairs and stools appeared to be scattered randomly throughout the room, often with books, knitting, newspapers or used cups and saucers stacked upon them. He had his doubts about whether the mother should be paying the housekeeper, as she evidently ignored this room, and the hall too. He could see a multitude of dust motes dancing in a sunbeam shining through one of the diamond-paned windows. Could use a conscientious house-elf or two _,_ he thought.

The housekeeper had left the sitting room door open; he could see into the front hall and through the kitchen doorway. This was evidently where the mother was.

"A man to see you, ma'am," he heard the housekeeper say. "About Teddy's schooling."

"Oh, really? That's wonderful! Let me call him—"

Severus Snape heard her struggle to open an old casement window, then winced at her very loud and un-ladylike bellow. " _Teddy!_ Please come here!"

A moment later, he heard, to his surprise, the clopping of horse's hooves. "I was just about to come over anyway, Mum," he heard the boy say excitedly in a high, piping voice. "I had to tell you! I got her to go over the first two fences! It was just like flying! Brilliant, that's all, simply _brilliant._ "

"That's lovely, darling, but I'm afraid that you'll have to do more practise jumping another time. Walk her back to the stable and get Dorothy to cool her down and muck out the stall. We have a guest I'd like you to meet."

"A _guest_?" Severus Snape could hear suspicion in his voice. "Don't you mean—?"

"No, I do _not_. This guest is here to see _you_. I'm not planning to _date_ him, don't worry about that. He wants to talk to us about your school."

"My school?" he said, sounding excited again. "Oi! That's brilliant! I'll be right back," he added excitedly. Severus took heart from this; perhaps they'd already known what he was—perhaps the mother was even a witch herself and had been impregnated by a Muggle. But if that was the case, why did he see no magical objects in the house, and why hadn't they responded to the Hogwarts letter? Even magical families who did not own an owl could go to the Diagon Alley post office. Muggle families could not respond by owl, of course, necessitating a visit from the deputy headmaster or another teacher.

He was startled by the mother suddenly striding into the room; she wore blue shorts that, despite being rather long, stopping just above the knee, caused Severus to be immediately distracted. He just wasn't _accustomed_ to seeing anyone's legs at Hogwarts, especially a woman's. He nearly forgot to look up at her face, which was laughing at him, having seen where his eyes had gone. He fought the urge to scowl; he did _not_ appreciate being laughed at. He was also disconcerted by feeling that she seemed vaguely familiar to him, though he could not have said why this was so.

She sat on the comfortable-looking couch, one leg folded under her as though she were a child; her simple white blouse had sleeves that stopped above the elbow, distracting him again. He knew that by Muggle standards her clothes were rather conservative—he'd certainly seen women wearing far more revealing clothes in London—but being in her house and alone with her felt very intimate, and for once there wasn't the wall of hostility to which he was accustomed preventing him from noticing that she was actually a woman. He felt annoyed more than anything else; he had a job to do. Time to get to it.

"Allow me to introduce myself," he said, sitting forward on the stiff couch. "I am Professor Snape, deputy headmaster at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

She nodded, smiling. "I thought you'd be from the school. Well, this is splendid! I was starting to worry, you know. Teddy was, too. Thought he'd have to give up the idea of going." She waved her hand around the sitting room. "No owl, you see."

He acknowledged this with a grim nod. "Of course. We always anticipate that some students will have difficulty replying and we send someone to visit them to discuss the school, answer any questions the parents have, and to take the student shopping for school supplies."

"Shopping! Oh, that sounds like fun! Although—it was a rather strange list that was included with the letter. I don't know where—"

"There is a place in London," he interrupted her.

"Hm. London. Well, I suppose we can drive down to the station and get the train. Or do you have a way to, you know— _whisk_ us there?" she asked hopefully, looking very curious. She made a strange motion with her hand to illustrate "whisking." He frowned.

"Unfortunately, I do not have permission to use magic to get you to Diagon Alley. Except—" he hesitated. He wouldn't be the one doing the magic, strictly speaking.

"What?"

"I _could_ possibly hail the Knight Bus. I can pay the fare for you and for your son."

She laughed. "Why would we need to wait until night to go? Are the shops only open at night? A magical tradition? At any rate, we don't have a night bus round here. We don't have any bus at all, unfortunately. On the far side of the next village I think there's a—"

"Not 'night bus,' 'Knight Bus,' with a 'K.' I hail it with my, erm, wand," he tried to explain. "And the shops are open roughly the same hours as Mug—er, non-magic shops."

"Oh!" She looked surprised. "You wave your wand to get the bus. Isn't _that_ magic?"

"Not in the strictest sense. And I would need to hail it in a place where the help will not notice," he said, thinking of the housekeeper and remembering that a stable hand was also mentioned during the mother-and-son conversation.

"We can do it in the lane leading to the house from the main road."

"Very good. Now, we will need to exchange a fair amount of money so that you can make purchases with wizarding currency. Does your bank have a London branch?"

"Wizarding currency? We're not going to another country, are we?"

"Well," he hesitated, "in a manner of speaking, we are. I take it Theodore's, erm, father did not mention this?" He watched her face carefully.

She frowned and rose, pacing the floor with her arms wrapped around her middle, as though she were cold. "Can you tell me something?"

"I shall endeavour to explain anything about the school that may be—"

"Are the children nice?" she said suddenly. Severus was jolted.

"What?"

She sighed and almost looked as though she might cry. He sincerely hoped that was not the case. "Are the other children at your school _nice_? Teddy's had to put up with quite a lot. This is a very conservative place. I wouldn't have chosen to come here to have Teddy, considering that where I was living was about as conservative, but my great-uncle was so sweet and understanding after I left my job. This was his farm, but he and his wife didn't have children. She died a couple of years before I had Teddy and he was _terribly_ lonely after that. And while _he_ was a godsend, my arrival sent all of the gossips around here into a frenzy, speculating about the father of my child, why he hadn't been able to marry me, and so on. I've heard everything from the father being a married member of Parliament to Prince Charles to Elvis. And mind you, Elvis is dead."

He grimaced. "I have heard of that person, and I _was_ aware that he had died."

She looked truly apologetic. "Sorry. Didn't mean to assume. And Teddy—" She bit her lip; now he could see that she _was_ crying, just a little. She impatiently wiped away the tears that had leaked from her eyes.

"Yes?" he said quietly, prompting her.

She swallowed. "He's put up with so much in the village school. That's one reason I've been telling myself that I should be glad he'll be going away to school, away from those horrid children who've been needling him for years about not having a father. And not only that, for being illegitimate. _And_ for not even knowing who his father is."

He raised one eyebrow. "You have never told him about his father?"

She sat again, on the edge of the horsehair couch where he was perched, about a foot away from him; he could feel the heat emanating from her body. He wished she had returned to the other couch. "No, and I'm not going to, _ever_. That's my business."

Severus frowned. "When he is older—" he began.

" _No_ ," she said adamantly. "When I became pregnant, he wasn't in a position to really be a father. He had this—this other whole life apart from me. He had obligations, a—a destiny. A burden is what I called it. I knew, when it became clear that I was going to have a baby, that he could never know he was going to be a father."

Severus continued to frown. "But he may come into contact with the boy, now that your son will be in the wizarding world. If the father learns about him, might he not guess?"

She sniffed, hugging herself more tightly, her brow furrowed with worry. "Just tell me whether the children are nice, please? Please tell me they are. I don't want to put Teddy through more of the 'bastard' taunts, the teasing songs…"

"Children are children," he said uncertainly, having never been asked about this by a parent before. "Should someone decide to taunt him for his—parentage, he will need to learn to tolerate it without responding inappropriately. Unfortunately, that is more likely to get him a detention than the child who did the taunting."

She nodded, looking like this sounded familiar. "He's been in trouble a fair number of times at school," she whispered, "for 'responding inappropriately.'" Severus wondered whether this included accidental magic. "But the things he's had to put up with…"

He sighed. "Self-control is something that all witches and wizards must learn. Theodore shall have to learn this as well, whether it is his background that is being maligned or his house team. Self-control is a sign of maturity." He knew that this probably wasn't what the mother wanted to hear, but he saw no point in lying to her. Children _could_ be cruel. He still remembered with acute clarity every prank played on him by James Potter and Sirius Black. He had thought longingly many times of being able to travel back through time to tell his younger self about ways to retaliate against his tormentors. He knew that it was not because he was 'mature' that he had refrained from retaliating when he was young but because he had been paralysed with fury, and embarrassed, which in turn made him feel utterly impotent. But to tell her that he _still_ thought of getting revenge on Potter and Black, despite their both being dead, would _not_ be comforting to her, he felt sure. It certainly would not seem "mature."

She rose again, angry. "He's only eleven!" She flailed her arms, looking as though _she_ was barely under control. "And don't you think eleven is terribly young to go away to school?" He remembered that she had said she had been telling herself that she _should_ be happy her son was going away. She clearly was _not_.

Her voice shook and he feared that more tears might be imminent. "Children of that age have been coming to Hogwarts for almost a thousand years. Some non-magical children go to boarding schools when they are even younger, I believe. Theodore will adjust."

"Oh, I don't doubt that _he'll_ be fine, probably, even if he does get a bit of teasing. It couldn't possibly be worse than what goes on around here. It's—it's me," she whispered, turning away from him to look out the window. "It's always been Teddy and me, me and Teddy. Since the day he was born not a night has passed when we weren't asleep under the same roof. We've _always_ been together." There were tears in her voice.

He didn't know what to say. "Erm, yes," he finally said. "It can be difficult for some."

She faced him, wiping tears from her cheeks again. "I'm sorry. You must think me daft. I'm _happy_ for him, really. I'm just being stupid and selfish when I think about rattling around here alone at night. Beatrice lives out; when she goes home it's to clean and cook for her brood of seven in the village. I don't run the farm myself; since Uncle Horace died, I've been renting to the Whites, next farm over. They have an enormous flock of sheep and not enough land for them, so they bring about half of their animals here. We also rent stalls to riders who can't keep their own horses, but grooming costs extra, so most of them muck out their own stalls and curry their own mounts. We keep a couple of horses for riding, largely because Uncle Horace bought them, as presents. I couldn't bear to part with Minnie and Mickey, but I doubt I'll replace them when they get old. I reckon I'll have to exercise them both while Teddy's at school. Dorothy doesn't live in, and she's not planning to be a groom forever; she's saving up money for beauty school." She laughed. "You should see the mad things she's done to the horses' tails and manes."

The front door opened and closed, interrupting her incessant prattling, followed by boyishly-careless footsteps pounding on the flagstones. A blur ran past the door and then footsteps were heard attacking the stairs.

His mother strode to the door, calling up the stairs, "Where are you going, Teddy?"

"Sorry I took so long, Mum. I was really filthy and it's a bit hard to get properly clean at the stable pump. I'm going to finish cleaning up and change my clothes. Be right down."

"All right, then. That is acceptable," she added, although Severus had the distinct impression that she was not being strict at all, despite her words. She smiled lovingly as she looked up the stairs and still bore this look when she turned back into the room. "I reckon I should probably change my clothes, as well? To go shopping for magical school supplies, I mean. He—he told me about wizarding dress."

Severus nodded, trying again not to look at her arms and legs. When she said _he_ she was obviously referring to the boy's father. "That might be wise," Severus managed to say, pulling his eyes away from her with some effort. He had hoped she would simply disappear up the stairs, but instead she continued to speak.

"Would a skirt be all right if it was long enough? I think I have one that's a good seven inches past my knees. Should do, don't you think?"

"Erm, yes. That would probably be adequate."

"Is this blouse okay, you think? And should I carry a cardigan? Do wizard shops have some sort of magical air-conditioning at this time of year?"

 _Why are we still discussing her clothing?_ he thought crossly. He did _not_ want to think about this woman's clothes, something that was evidently lost on her. "It would seem wise to carry a cardigan to allow for temperature changes," he said stiffly. She laughed.

"Of course, look who I'm asking," she said. "Mr Dressed-Head-to-Toe-in-Black. In _August_. All right, then. I'll be right back."

He heard her go up the stairs, still laughing. _Is she laughing at me?_ He looked down at his clothing. He'd usually found that going into the Muggle world dressed all in black and behaving aloofly meant that he was generally left alone. He did not know what assumptions the people were making who left him alone—they couldn't _all_ be assuming that he was a priest—but he didn't care, either. Now he wondered whether he was actually standing out more by dressing this way. _Annoying woman!_ he thought. _I have better things to do than to expend this much time and energy thinking about clothing._

"Here we are!" she said, returning in a blue skirt falling a few inches above her ankles. "Quick-change artist, at your service. But I reckon I'll still stand out as a Muggle, yeah?"

He looked up at her quickly; he'd started to use the term earlier, but stopped himself. She'd been the first to say it. He wondered again who her son's father was and how much he had told her about the wizarding world. Had the father violated the Wizarding Code of Secrecy? It certainly seemed so. _And_ he was obviously failing to support his child. Severus Snape felt a familiar anger move within him; he had been angry before about wizard fathers who had neglected their children, but this one was quickly making him feel like filling out a report at the Ministry, despite his hatred of paperwork.

"Yes, I think it will be clear that you are a Muggle, but at this time of year a number of Muggle parents are taking their children shopping for their school things. And we will need to visit your bank first, remember." He watched her; she was peering into a handbag, checking on its contents with extreme unconcern for what he was saying. He cleared his throat. "Madam," he said, trying to get her attention again; "are you quite certain that you do not wish to tell me the identity of your son's father? I have tracked down a number of fathers of children who have grown up in the Muggle world and the Ministry of Magic has required them to share in the expense of rearing their children. There is no reason for you bear the burden alone."

She was no longer ignoring him, which he now thought he would have preferred; her eyes blazed in anger. "I _told_ you. I am not going to tell anyone who his father is, _ever_. I have been supporting him on my own, thank you very much, and have plenty of money set by for his education, unless it costs a king's ransom to go to this school of yours. Uncle Horace insisted upon setting up a special fund when Teddy was born. This isn't the richest farm in the county, but I can pay my bills and my few employees, as long as the Whites and my stable tenants pay _me_ on the first of the month. We have a good roof over our heads and food on the table. I do _not_ need to disturb Teddy's father for any reason. Please do not mention it again," she added crossly, swinging a cardigan around her shoulders. She crossed her arms and stared into the hall. "Where can that boy be?" she grumbled under her breath, before calling, "Teddy! We're waiting!"

Severus was startled by ringing; he realised after a moment that it was the telephone. She crossed the room, her lips drawn into a thin line, and answered it. "Oh, hello, Adrienne. Yes, I know…" She massaged her temples with one hand as she spoke, calming a little.

He tried to focus on a painting, to avoid eavesdropping on her conversation. Footsteps pounded on the stairs and a moment later, her son entered the room, clearly very excited. He appeared to be tall for his age and was thin and wiry-looking, wearing faded jeans and a slouchy T-shirt with a very realistic lion on it. Severus felt a shock of cold move through him and told himself sternly, _Don't stare. Don't stare._

His mother rang off the phone and turned to her son. "There you are, Teddy. Come meet—what are you called again? I'm sorry, I've been so distracted by the idea that Teddy's going to be going away to magic school that I quite forgot."

"Professor Snape. I am the Potions master and deputy headmaster at Hogwarts," he managed to choke out; because he was speaking to the boy he had a good excuse now for looking him in the face, so he could really _see_ him.

At these words, the boy's hazel eyes lit up and he grinned ear to ear. "Oh! You're actually one of my teachers! Brilliant! Do you like what you teach? Is it very difficult? How often would I have Potions lessons? Is it like chemistry? Or more like cooking?"

Severus Snape didn't know what to say. The words spilling out of the familiar mouth were like a meaningless roar in his ears. He suddenly didn't know what to do with his hands, or how to arrange his facial features. This he had not expected, not in a million years. Now he knew why the mother had looked vaguely familiar to him.

The boy standing before him was the spitting image of Harry Potter.

#/#/#

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	21. Our New Celebrity

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 **Replay**

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 **Chapter Twenty-One**

 **Our New Celebrity**

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Hermione leaned back, put her hand over her stomach, eyes closed, and sighed contentedly. Harry grinned. "You don't have to rub it in _quite_ so much, Hermione. I'm not a good cook. I get it, I get it," he said, rolling his eyes as he tilted his glass and caught the last dregs of the beer he'd been drinking with his shepherd's pie, which he had disposed of very quickly. She had also not failed to comment on the fact that _after_ eating a toasted cheese sandwich at his house he had ordered a rather filling meal at the pub.

"Well," Hermione said sleepily, her eyes still closed, "I obviously married the right man as far as cooking is concerned. Neville is much better than I am, and _he_ doesn't let Crookshanks steal my food."

" _You_ were the one singing the praises of Crups. Now you know how wrong you were. And what do you mean _the right man_? You were never interested in me."

"No, but Ron's as bad a cook as you are. I could have been eating burnt toasted cheese sandwiches for the rest of my life if he—if we hadn't split up."

Harry was about to remind her that Ron had been the one to end their relationship, but decided not to. As anxious as he'd been for the rows to end he would have given anything to hear them scream at each other again after Ron told Hermione to sod off in no uncertain terms, in front of the entire school, during lunch at the Gryffindor table, giving a long list of all the reasons why he no longer wanted to be saddled with her and wished he'd never met her. The following months of their not talking, not rowing, not even deigning to be in the same room unless they had a lesson together did not make Harry's last year in school any more tolerable, on top of everything else he had to deal with. And as much as he missed all three of them being close friends, Harry also would have given anything if the horrible tragedy that brought the three of them together again had never occurred.

"He is a terrible cook, it's true," Harry agreed. "You know that spell Luna put on their cooker so that he can't get near it? He forgets about it constantly and keeps getting thrown across the room whenever he tries walking too near it," Harry laughed, trying to lighten the mood.

"I know—Ginny told me. You'd think by now he'd been hurled against the sink enough times." She shook her head, leaning forward again with her elbows on the table, looking wistful.

"Yeah," Harry said agreeably, putting his glass down with a _thunk_. "You escaped a lifetime of bad cooking and forgetfulness. And I have two best friends who aren't always trying to kill each other. I like it much better this way," he added, trying to sound cheerful and put out of his mind yet again the reason that they'd become friends again.

Hermione gave him a strangely diffident half-smile. "Although—" she said softly, before stopping and sighing again, staring into space.

Harry felt a momentary panic in his chest. "Although _what_? You couldn't possibly be—I mean— _Ron._ The disaster that was _you_ and _Ron._ Tell me you're not—"

Hermione gave a forced laugh. "Don't be stupid, Harry! Neville and I are—are perfectly—perfectly h-h-hap-happy!" she finally said as she burst into tears.

#/#/#

Severus Snape had never thought to go shopping with _Harry Potter's son_. He made an excuse for their not taking the Knight Bus. The mother drove them to the village and they took a train to London. Severus knew that everyone on the Knight Bus would see the resemblance between Theodore Harrison and Harry Potter immediately; he felt it wiser to postpone the gawping as long as possible.

Severus scrutinised the boy while waiting in the Muggle bank lobby for his mother to withdraw funds. He quickly decided that Harrison bore a greater resemblance to James Potter than to Harry Potter. He had no scar and his hazel eyes were the exact same colour as his grandfather's. He was also taller and healthier-looking than his father had been when he'd first come to Hogwarts. This boy had clearly had plenty to eat, fresh air and exercise, as well as a doting mother. Severus felt a familiar hostility well up in him as he recalled meeting James Potter. The name 'Severus Snape' had been cause for immediate merriment with Potter and Black especially, and they did not cease to be amused by it for seven years. If only that had been the extent of his problems with them.

As they moved from shop to shop in Diagon Alley, more and more witches and wizards stopped to stare and point at young Harrison. Severus did his best to shield the boy from what people were saying, growing quieter and quieter as he found it increasingly difficult to stop the hateful memories of James Potter invading his brain. With every recollection came fresh pain. Severus was finding it very difficult to continue to be civil to the boy, to protect him and behave as if he were a random student. It was as though he had travelled back in time and was shopping with a young James Potter.

Harrison was oblivious both to the interest of the wizards around him and to Severus Snape's hostility. He hopped around his Potions professor excitedly, asking whether he could buy a broom to keep at his mother's house, but his mother decided that it would be too tempting for him before the term began. In general, Harrison became the equivalent of a deeply annoying boil to Severus, one that he was thinking very fondly of _lancing._

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"Mum! Rory! Did you see that?"

Ginny stood at the counter with Mr Flourish, going over the invoice for the new texts, trying to assure him that even if a number of students failed to gain entry to the course due to low marks on their OWLs, _someone_ would eventually buy the extra books.

"We need to guarantee that there is no risk of any student not being able to purchase a text," she repeated for what seemed the millionth time. Mr Flourish frowned at her.

"Mum—" Ruby said breathlessly, tugging at her mother's robe while her sister stood nearby lightly stroking the resident bookshop cat, a large tawny-coloured tom.

"Ssh, Ruby! I'm busy," Ginny said tersely, glancing at her for only a moment and removing her fingers from her robes before turning back to Mr Flourish.

"I think, Professor Weasley, that you must be under the mistaken impression that we have people beating down our door to own copies of _Dangers of the Dark Arts_ ," the wizened old man said acidly, tapping a yellow-stained fingernail on the ornate gold-leafed book cover and leering at her from under bushy grey eyebrows that constituted all of the hair growing on his head, apart from the tufts protruding from his ears. "If dark wizards were still threatening us all, that would be another matter, of course. I couldn't keep this sort of thing on the shelves for more than a moment back when You-Know-Who—"

"But _Mum_ —" Ruby whinged, tempted to tug on her mother's robes again.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Ginny interrupted him hotly, ignoring her daughter. "So _dreadfully_ sorry that my husband's defeating Voldemort has _hurt your business_!" she said, her voice rising. Mr Flourish winced, which just added fuel to the fire that was Ginny's temper. "Oh, come on, Mr Flourish. _Ten years_ later and you still can't say the name? _Voldemort_ _VoldemortVOLDEMORT_ _!_ " she repeated, causing customers to look askance at her, while the old man cowered back against a bookshelf crammed so full of volumes they appeared to have been hammered into place.

Ruby gave up trying to distract her mother. He was already gone, anyway. At length they left the bookshop, her mother's red hair curling in sweaty tendrils around her face, which made Ruby hopeful that they could talk her into getting some ice cream at Florean Fortescue's, since her mother seemed like she could use something cold herself.

Ruby decided to try again when they were sitting at a table outside Fortescue's, eating ice cream cones, while their mother tried not to look like she was eyeing their treats covetously and drank a chilled glass of pumpkin juice. Ruby surveyed her mother cautiously. She seemed marginally calmer than she had been in Flourish and Blotts. "So, Mum—did you see him? In the bookshop?"

Ginny blinked in surprise. "See who? I was rather busy talking to Mr Flourish, Ruby, and I don't appreciate you—"

"But _the boy_! He looked _exactly like dad_!"

Ginny raised one eyebrow before resuming sipping her pumpkin juice. "Don't be ridiculous, Ruby. Every little boy with dark hair and glasses does _not_ look like your father."

"I know every boy doesn't. But _this_ one did. He didn't have the same colour eyes. Brown, I think. And no scar—"

"—but otherwise he was _identical_ to your father," Ginny finished for her in an airy, sceptical tone. Ruby sank down in her chair and wished she was eating Brussels sprouts or something she could refuse to finish in order to irk her mother. If she didn't finish her ice cream she'd be the only one suffering. It didn't help that a smirk was hovering around the edges of her sister's mouth as she demurely licked her ice cream.

"Oh, Mummy," Rory said suddenly. "Don't forget that we need to stop at the butcher's in the village to get the chicken for dinner."

Ginny closed her eyes and sighed. "That's right. I did nearly forget. All right then, girls, let's finish so we can get the Knight Bus to the village." She opened her eyes and looked fondly at Rory, the sun glinting off her dark hair as she nibbled delicately at the top edge of her ice cream cone. "It's a good thing you remembered, Love. I wouldn't have done. Whatever would I do without you, Rory?"

" _Probably have to wipe your own bum after you go to the loo,_ " Ruby said very quietly, picking a currant out of her black currant-caramel swirl ice cream. Pausing before she popped the currant into her mouth, she looked up in horror at her mother, whose face was red with fury. "Oh, bloody hell," Ruby whispered quickly when she saw that, attempting to give her mother a conciliatory smile. "Did—did I say that _out loud_?" she added feebly.

#/#/#

Severus Snape wrinkled his nose upon entering Ollivanders. Dust lay thickly everywhere and both the boy and his mother gazed in awe, as they had also done at Flourish and Blotts, Madam Malkin's and the apothecary. Ollivander's luminous eyes appeared suddenly out of the darkness of the shop. He raised one brow as his eerie gaze remained fixed on the eleven-year-old boy who stood nervously near the counter, gazing around at the seemingly infinite display of boxes.

"Ah, Mr Pott—"

"—Harrison," Severus said quickly. "This is Theodore Harrison. And his mother, er—" He realised suddenly that he had no idea what the woman's name was.

"Matilda," she said, smiling, extending her hand to Mr Ollivander. "But call me Tilda."

Snape found himself staring at her profile, wondering what she recalled. Ollivander gave her a wavering smile. "How do you do, Miss Harrison? And what a fine son you have. You are a Muggle?" he said suddenly. She nodded.

"Yes. This has all been quite fascinating. Every shop stranger than the last! Do all of those little boxes have wands? How on earth will Teddy ever choose just one?"

"Ah, but he shall not. The wand chooses the wizard, Miss Harrison." He fixed the boy with a watery eye. "Your wand hand?" The boy raised his right hand uncertainly and Mr Ollivander removed a tape measure from his pocket, starting to gauge the boy's arms and legs while explaining the way that Ollivander wands were made. He began selecting boxes from shelves in what appeared to be a random fashion while the tape measure continued on its own. Severus could see that Tilda Harrison and her son found this shocking, while Severus was rather bored with it. While visiting Ollivanders with other Muggle families and their children in the previous month he'd found the wand-buying experience especially tedious. Under normal circumstances he could have gone to browse in the bookshop, but he didn't feel comfortable leaving the Harrisons alone. The old man had already nearly blurted out the Potter name. It was a miracle that no one who'd seen the boy had done it yet. How did she think no one would _guess_?

"No, no, no," Ollivander said repeatedly when the boy's wand-waving efforts still came to nought. He must have tried dozens. Ollivander finally went behind his desk and slowly removed a box from a drawer, staring at the lid for a full minute before bringing it to Harrison.

"Try that," he said softly. "Mahogany. Eleven inches. Powerful. Excellent for Transfiguration." He opened the box and the boy reached for the wand tentatively, his gasp preceding the shower of red and gold sparks that emerged from the tip. Severus remembered the feeling of warmth he had felt before finding his first wand, which he still owned. He frowned at the wand in the boy's hand. Something about it was very familiar. It looked used, not new, and appeared to have burn marks on the handle.

Ollivander nodded sagely at the boy, who was staring at the wand in awe. Tilda Harrison seemed equally awe-struck and asked nervously, "How much is it, Mr Ollivander?"

The old man shook himself, appearing to have forgotten she was there. "Oh, I should not charge you for that, I should not. It is a family heirloom, after all, given to me for safe-keeping. No, I should not charge your son for being chosen by his own grandfather's wand."

"Grandfather!" Harrison exclaimed in shock. "My—my grandfather's wand? You—you know who my grandfather was? Who my father is?"

"Of course Mr Ollivander doesn't know who your father is or your grandfather was," Tilda Harrison said quickly, throwing Ollivander a glare.

Ollivander was evidently immune to her hostility. "It is a strong line, madam, and will not be denied. That wand chose him for a reason. Wands can rarely be handed down in families. But now it is clear that it was retrieved after his grandfather's death and entrusted to me for a reason." He smiled at Harrison. "It has a unicorn hair for the core. A very unusual combination, mahogany and unicorn. Great strength and great delicacy; darkness and light, the hard-working and the pure, untouched. Like the original owner of the wand, you must also be a wizard of contrasts and contradictions, Mr Harrison. That will confuse others and could be to your advantage," he added with a nod.

Tilda Harrison appeared to have grown as impatient as Severus had previously felt with the wand-buying ritual, but now Severus wouldn't have dreamed of being anywhere else. Harrison's mother looked like she'd prefer to be meeting the queen in her nightclothes.

"Are you certain about this wand, Mr Ollivander? I'd be happy to _pay_ for a wand. I went to Gringotts and still have plenty of gold and silver."

"No, my dear. _That_ is the boy's wand." He turned to Harrison and smiled at him again. "Use it well, lad. Use it well."

#/#/#

Harry's mouth worked soundlessly as he glanced around the pub, hoping the other patrons hadn't noticed Hermione making a scene. She covered her face with her hands and tears dripped between her fingers. He watched her helplessly for a half minute, not saying anything, before she raised her tear-stained face to Harry. He swallowed. "Erm, Hermione, perhaps you should talk to Ginny about—about what's bothering you—"

Hermione shook her head. "I tried already. She thinks I'm—I'm overreacting and that if I just stop _thinking_ about it everything will be fine. Which is exactly what my mum said, and what Neville's gran told us, and his meddling old Aunt Enid…"

Harry shook his head in confusion. "Stop thinking about what?"

Hermione sighed. "I tried asking Ginny about what you two did, but she just said I wouldn't want to know. So maybe you'll tell me. Harry—when you and Ginny were—were trying for the twins, how hard was it?"

Harry's eyes went wide. "What? We _weren't_ trying, technically. Are—are you asking—?" He stopped and peered at her, confused. "Um, _what_ are you asking?"

Her mouth was a grim line. "Did it take many times? I mean—did you have any difficulty?" she said almost inaudibly. Harry felt certain that he was bright red.

"Erm, no, unless having that happen on your first go is—"

Hermione gasped. "You're joking! You mean the first time you weren't using birth control you conceived?" She sounded acutely jealous.

"What? Hermione, you've seriously got the wrong end of the stick. So to speak." His face felt even warmer; he wished he had another pint. "That was our first time, period. Do you think we _planned_ to have the twins eight months after we were married? And I'd always heard that you couldn't, erm, you know, your first time."

"That's a myth actually. Since a fertile woman is giving off pheromones that are designed to attract a healthy mate, it's even more likely that—"

" _Hermione_ ," Harry said, feeling very cross. " _Healthy mate_? Have you decided to leave off being a labour negotiator for elves and narrate nature films? I'm feeling a bit like a hedgehog now."

Hermione stared at him, shaking her head. "Sorry. I just can't believe that you and Ginny _waited_ that long. I mean—if your first time was a month before the wedding you would have been—let's see—just two weeks shy of your nineteenth birthday!"

Harry looked around nervously. "You pay the bill, Hermione," he whispered. "I'll be in the Gents' with my head in the toilet. I need to do something a little _less_ embarrassing now."

Hermione started to laugh but it ended up sounding more like a sob. "I'm sorry, Harry. I just—I reckon I didn't think—I mean, even Neville and I—we were so afraid that first time that someone would suddenly decide that they just _had_ to be in the Room of Requirement at that moment—"

" _The Room of Requirement?_ You and Neville? No—don't. I need to get that image out of my mind _now_."

Hermione laughed ruefully. "Mostly we were afraid that Ron and Luna would walk in. I'm just surprised, Harry. About you and Ginny. That's not what _she_ told me."

Harry narrowed his eyes. "All right, what tales did she tell you? Because it's coming back to me now—she said that night that she'd let a friend or two believe that we'd already, erm, well _already_. Because no one would believe we hadn't."

"No tales. No _de_ tails, anyway. Except—well, she did strongly imply that she had no cause to be dissatisfied," Hermione said with a smirk. "I can't believe she was lying."

Harry grimaced. "What? You think she _did_ have cause to be dissatisfied? Oh, right, that's not what you meant," he said when he saw her exasperated face. "Well, as you pointed out, Ruby is Ginny all over again—"

"—and Ruby can be somewhat 'economical' with the truth," Hermione added. "Although—it's not as though _you_ never told a lie in your life." Harry shrugged over that. "But what I don't understand is—how did you wait so long? I would have thought the pair of you—well, you were always staring at each other in public. You gave every impression that when you were alone together you were going at it like animals."

Harry's jaw dropped. "And when exactly did we give that impression? I had no peace at Grimmauld Place after my sixth year, what with Snape and Remus showing up morning, noon and night to badger me about Occlumency and Legilimency lessons. We might have had some time together during my seventh year if it weren't for—well, you and Ron and the cold war, plus everything else. And after it was all over and we got back from the Ministry, you and Ginny were still in the hospital wing for another month. And even after I bought my house it was impossible to do anything, since she was still so delicate and my Auror training started a week later, and then she had to go back for her seventh year."

"I was lucky they accepted me in the program," Hermione whispered, remembering. "Madam Pomfrey didn't want to let me go."

"Nor did Neville," Harry remembered, which brought them full circle. "I thought they were going to kick _him_ out when he kept letting you win during duelling practise."

She shrugged. "Well, he was trying to keep _me_ in the program. Madam Pomfrey was probably right—I shouldn't have done it. I wasn't fit. But even beyond that—they were right to kick me out. And I like what I'm doing."

Harry surveyed her shrewdly. " _Hermione_ , you're trying to change the subject. You and Neville. What's going on, exactly?"

She sighed. "Nothing's going on, that's the problem. We've been trying to have a baby for years now. And in the meantime, you and Ginny managed it on the very night you lost your virginity to each other and Ron and _Luna_ turn them out like it's nothing at all."

Harry guffawed for a moment, but stopped himself quickly. It had been an utter shock to him that Ron had taken to fatherhood the way he had. He and Luna had three boys so far, as though trying to duplicate Molly and Arthur's output, and Ron took great pleasure in rolling around on the lawn of what Harry still thought of as Luna's dad's house, where they now lived, wrestling with little Percy, Cedric and Harry, who was called Hal, for all the world like a golden retriever playing with its pups. At three, four, and six the boys all looked remarkably similar, like small versions of Ron. If they weren't all together, so Harry could judge by size, he often used the wrong name. And Luna was pregnant again.

"Well, erm, have the pair of you been to see, you know, experts?" he said nervously, wishing that he really _was_ in the loo with his head in a toilet.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "I don't know, Harry, would you say talking to every Healer in Britain, Ireland and the rest of Europe, plus Canada and America, _plus_ going to every Muggle fertility clinic in all of those places qualifies?" Her voice had a bitter edge.

Harry was shocked. " _Blimey_. Is that what you do on all of those holidays?"

Hermione nodded miserably. "What fun, yeah?"

"And—and no one can help? That just seems—odd. I mean, you'd think that with all that witches and wizards can do—and all that Muggle medicine can do, for that matter—"

"Well, see, there's the problem, Harry. You have to actually have something _wrong_ with you to be cured of it," she said.

Harry stopped dead. "But you just said that you and Neville can't have kids."

"Evidently. But there's absolutely no reason _why_ we can't, according to the experts. They say that we should have had a half-dozen by now. So, I don't know, maybe I'm the last person you should be asking for parenting advice," she added with a sniff.

#/#/#

"Thank you for your help, Professor Snape." Tilda Harrison stepped back from the door and prepared to close it, then looked shocked for a second. _Snape!_ she thought. _I remember now._ She peered at him suspiciously and he looked suspiciously back, as though he knew what she was thinking. She remembered the things Harry had said about him, the unfairness, but also his bravery, his work for the Order of the Phoenix…

"You are quite welcome, Madam," he said stiffly.

"And—and thank you. For not telling Teddy about—you know. And thank you for not telling anyone we met in the shops. Although Mr Ollivander—"

He eyed her grimly. "I did not need to tell him who your son's father is for the same reason that I did not need to tell anyone else who saw him. Surely you noticed the reactions? I can appreciate that you do not wish to reveal the, erm, circumstances of his conception, which are naturally a private affair. I mean—a private matter," he amended, annoyed with himself for his sloppy choice of words. "But you must understand—there is not a person at Hogwarts who will not immediately know who his father is. You seem to remember his telling you some—things. Surely he mentioned his fame?"

He wished he hadn't spoken; she had the most terror-stricken face he'd ever seen on anyone. "You're certain? I thought—Mr Ollivander—but—but _everyone_ will know? It's been so many years—"

"Ten years since he defeated the Dark Lord. But to many it is like yesterday. It is possible that it may appear in the _Daily Prophet_ after today's trip, if any of the wizards who saw your son speaks to a reporter. You truly did not notice the reactions?"

She wrung her hands. "I was so fascinated by what I was seeing around me that—that—"

"Please, Miss Harrison," he said stiffly as she began to cry in earnest.

"Oh, no," she sobbed, sinking onto the bottom step of the staircase. "How can I send him now? It'll be far worse, won't it, to have everyone know who his dad is, than no one knowing? And he's so been looking forward to this."

"You would deny him his right to a magical education because you wish to hide his parentage from him?" Severus whispered in shock. She looked stung.

"Are you telling me that you don't think the other children will give him grief over this?"

Severus thought of something else, though, that she didn't know: Harry Potter was a Hogwarts _teacher_. She did not know that her son would be taught _by his own_ _father_. He decided that he would not tell her, or she would surely forbid him to go. Severus observed her hunched shoulders, vaguely recalling a young woman propped up on a couch, stunned, while he modified her memory. But then how did she remember so much?

She ran her fingers through hair that was about equal parts blonde and grey, her large light eyes shining with tears. "I've tried so hard to protect him, and now—"

"You cannot protect him forever. There isn't a school of magic in the world where he could go and not be recognised for who he is." He sighed. "You should simply accept that the time has come when this can no longer be kept a secret."

She hugged her knees, nodding, before looking up at him imploringly. "Can I ask a tremendous favour of you, Professor Snape?"

He froze. Very hesitantly, he responded, "Of course, Madam."

"Please be there for my Teddy. If he needs to talk to someone. Could you? I—I'm so afraid of how he'll respond." She sighed, examining her tear-soaked skirt. "He'll be furious with me. He's been begging me for the last two years to tell him who his dad is."

"Is there a _particular_ reason why you have not?" He tried to sound ignorant.

She grimaced. "Well, the circumstances of—of Teddy's conception were— _unusual,_ shall we say. It's not exactly the sort of thing I want to discuss."

He nodded. _Yes,_ he thought. _An adult shagging a sixteen-year-old is something you don't want to bring up with your eleven-year-old, let alone a younger child._

"So, _please_ , Professor? Just be there for Teddy? No preferential treatment, of course. I just—I think you understand what I'm talking about." She turned deep pink and he nodded; he did indeed know exactly what she was talking about. However, she thought his nod meant something else. "You will? Oh, thank you so much!" She smiled through her tears and stood, extending her hand. He took it reluctantly and she pumped it vigorously as she gabbled, "I don't know what to say! It'll be so much easier knowing that you'll be looking out for him should anyone mention his—his father."

When she had finally withdrawn her hand from his, he gave her a very small bow with his head and said, "Just have him down at King's Cross on the first of September. Platform Nine and Three Quarters." He handed her Harrison's ticket. "You will have to walk through the barrier between platforms Nine and Ten. There will be others doing the same. The train leaves at eleven, so don't be late." He couldn't bring himself to say anything else. The last thing he intended to do was look out for her son, for _James Potter's_ grandson and Harry Potter's _son._ He nodded to her again before turning to leave.

But when the door closed behind him, he turned, uncertain. Should he have told her that Harry Potter was going to be one of her son's teachers? Another thought occurred to him: _Should I warn Potter that he's coming?_ From what the mother had said he had the distinct impression that Potter did not know that he had an illegitimate son.

He knew where the Potters lived as they had dutifully sent him an invitation to their wedding nine years earlier. He remembered it vividly because he'd thought it the height of arrogance—and quite typical—for Potter to live in a former _church_. He hadn't planned to attend but Dumbledore had convinced him it would be good form, no matter how little he wished to spend a hot August afternoon pretending to be happy for Potter and Ginny Weasley. However, this served his purpose now, as he knew exactly where he was going. Without further ado, he Apparated to St Clare's Chapel.

#/#/#

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	22. The Unexpected Son

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Twenty-Two**

 **The Unexpected Son**

 **#/#/#**

Severus Snape stood in an overgrown graveyard, tall wildflowers waving in the grasses surrounding the ancient gravestones and monuments. He was at the edge of the property; in the distance, on a terrace near the old chapel, he could see a table and chairs. The Potters seemed to be having their tea in the late summer sunshine, out-of-doors. Potter's wife, her bright hair aflame in the evening sun, sat at one end of the table, dishing up food for their twin daughters. The two dark heads looked identical from this distance, so like their father, who sat at the opposite end of the table from his wife, laughing. On a manicured section of the otherwise overgrown lawn adjacent to the terrace, a tennis court had been created. Rackets were lying carelessly on a bench near the net. Four bicycles, two large and two small, also stood nearby, the tall grass brushing the pedals.

Severus's eyes fell on the girls again. _They don't know that they have an older brother._ This was going to be hard to explain all around. He continued to watch them, and as he did so, he changed his mind about being the bearer of this particular news, pulling out his wand again and Disapparating silently. He arrived in Diagon Alley, where it branched off into Knockturn Alley. Glancing around furtively, he strode into Knockturn Alley and immediately found the disreputable pub he sought, a pub where no one bothered anyone who didn't want to be bothered, where the employees seemed even to avoid accidentally looking at the patrons' faces, so they couldn't be called upon to give testimony before the Wizengamot.

 _The truth will come out in due time_ , he thought. And will it be Potter whose reputation is ruined? No. There would be a small scandal for _him_ , but it would pass. And while his wife and daughters might suffer some scrutiny and discomfort, for some reason it was Tilda Harrison who occupied his mind. _She_ was the one about whom he worried, as she would have to face her son with the truth about what she'd done when Potter was a mere teenager. He picked up the firewhisky and drank it quickly. As he assimilated the burning sensation in his throat, embraced it, he closed his eyes, thinking about a tall Muggle woman with greying blonde hair and large light eyes…

#/#/#

The first of September dawned with a whimper, the sky over all of Britain blanketed with grey clouds that seemed to bode nothing good.

Ginny sighed and stared at the ceiling in the grey dawn light. The gilding and red paint was flaking off the heavy hand-hewn timbers and boards that supported the weighty tile roof of St Clare's, but she rather liked the worn, angled bedroom ceiling. It was comforting and familiar. That evening they'd be sleeping again at the top of the north tower of Hogwarts, where Dumbledore had helped them create a home within the castle when she and Harry had first been hired, but which never really felt like home to her.

Only a year after they'd taken the Hogwarts jobs they'd had to work out what to do about the girls' education, since neither they nor Molly were keen on the idea of her teaching the twins. Molly had been taking care of the girls when Harry and Ginny were teaching lessons, but she'd indicated that she had no interest in actually being their tutor after a particularly painful prank Ruby had played upon her grandmother involving a salamander and stinging nettles. So the girls had gone off to the Barnard Castle primary school, which involved a lot of back-and-forth between Hogsmeade and County Durham on the Knight Bus, though after the first month the girls were in school, Ginny and Harry had decided that it would be nice to spend the weekends in their own house, where they now went every Friday evening during the school terms, returning to the castle on Sunday evening. They also spent the Christmas and Easter holidays in Durham.

Ginny was glad. She'd missed St Clare's more than she thought she would when she started teaching. Somehow living at Hogwarts as Professor Weasley—it was deemed too confusing to have two Professor Potters—made her feel unsettled, as though she ceased to be married when she walked into the castle. She knew that this was ridiculous, yet the feeling persisted. It didn't help that Dumbledore and then McGonagall preferred that professors' private lives remain just that, private, so Ginny and Harry behaved as though they _weren't_ married when they were in "public" at Hogwarts, despite most of the students—if they read and remembered their history texts—knowing that Harry had married her and that they had two daughters.

However, they respected the wishes of their employer and did not walk the corridors arm in arm. They did not even show their children to the students. There was a special passage out of their tower for taking the girls to Hogsmeade early every morning in order to hail the bus. And Ginny had to seethe in silence while sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls preened before Harry and batted their eyes at him. She wanted to ask them whether they were just bloody _stupid_ or had never heard that The Boy Who Lived was _a married man,_ not to mention _their teacher._ Perhaps they didn't care. She laughed for a moment, wondering whether the same girls would have been throwing themselves at Harry if he still looked as he had when he was in school.

"What's so funny?"

She turned to see Harry gazing back at her affectionately and smiled at him. "Nothing." She rolled over and put her head on his bare chest, tracing a dark line of hair down his stomach, making him flinch. She patted his stomach instead, feeling the resistance both of his muscles and the thin layer of fat that lay just below the surface. "Where has the thin little runt gone that I married?" she asked playfully, rubbing his belly.

"He's been haring after his wife for the last eight years as she rides her bicycle all over the county and plays tennis obsessively in an effort to, and I quote, 'not have hips the size of a house.'" He patted his own stomach. "To do all of that I need to eat well."

She detected a defensive note in his voice. "I didn't say you were fat. You're lovely," she whispered, kissing his shoulder, meaning it. "I'm just trying to remember when you actually started looking like a _man_ instead of a little boy. I don't think I could have caught you and prevented you from scattering bits of yourself all over the ground if you _weren't_ still a skinny little stick at the end of your sixth year."

"My being scrawny _was_ life-saving that day, it's true," he agreed. "But I wasn't _little_ ," he added, the defensive tone returning.

"I remember. When you'd grown a fraction of an inch taller than Hermione you were positively crowing," she laughed, grinning. He turned over and started tickling her. She screeched for a second before attempting to clamp her mouth shut. "Stop it, _stop_!" she gasped as he continued, though she had a feeling that he didn't want to be using his hands for _tickling_ her anymore. When he did stop it was by giving her a look that always took her breath away as he brought his mouth down on hers.

At that moment one of their mobile phones began to ring, playing a Muggle tune Ginny didn't know, so it had to be Harry's. As the tune continued and Harry went on kissing and groping her, she opened her eyes and attempted unsuccessfully to speak and kiss at the same time. He obligingly moved his mouth to her neck. "Um, don't you think you should get that, Harry?" He murmured something inaudible against her skin and otherwise continued what he was doing. A battle waged within her between the urge to _let_ him continue and the urge to stop the noise the damn phone was making. The phone won. She rolled over, away from Harry's grasp. He grunted in a complaining tone while she picked up the phone from his bedside table and answered it.

"Yeah?" she said tersely to the caller.

"Ginny?"

She sat up abruptly, pushing Harry's hands away. He'd decided to try to learn whether she could carry on a conversation whilst he was making that virtually impossible.

" _Mum_!" she cried, her eyes wide, which was all that was needed for Harry to spring away from her and cease all physical contact.

"I thought I'd called Harry. Oh, dear, I must have made a mistake."

"No, you did. I just answered it myself so it would stop playing that tune he's so fond of," she said truthfully, sticking her tongue out at Harry. He responded in kind, which made her wish that they could resume their previous activity.

"Oh, all right. I thought I was going spare."

"What is it, Mum?" she said impatiently. Harry continued to display his tongue to her. Ginny was very glad that her mother couldn't see him; she would have been scandalised.

"Well, I'm sorry, Love, but I can't pick the girls up at school today. Ron and Luna have asked me to watch the boys while they go to the midwife. There's no one else. Can you or Harry do it? I know it means missing part of the feast, and it's the first day of the term…"

"No, it's fine. I'm sure _Harry_ can pick up the girls. And he probably won't miss the feast at all." Ginny grinned at Harry, who frowned. He stuck his tongue out at her again and revisited the idea of distracting her, which made her gasp.

"What was that? Are you all right, Ginny?" her mother wanted to know.

"Erm, yes, Mum, just fine. We—we have a lot of things to do today. Better get to it!" she said more excitedly than she'd intended. She thought it a good thing that her mother had no way of knowing exactly _why_ her voice had become so high-pitched.

"You don't _sound_ all right, but if you say so. Well, I'd best be making breakfast. Have a good trip!"

"Yeah," Ginny gasped, trying to keep her voice even, despite the things that Harry was doing. "We—we will. Say hello to Dad for me. And Ron and Luna and the boys," she managed to gasp, wanting to both throttle Harry and do things to him that were the polar opposite of throttling.

"Ta!" her oblivious mother said. Ginny ended the call and returned the phone to the table, glaring at Harry with narrowed eyes.

"You've been _very_ , naughty, Mr Potter. I think a detention is in order."

Harry grinned mischievously and kissed the tip of her nose. "That was exactly what I was hoping for, Professor Weasley."

#/#/#

Teddy shifted from foot to foot, pulling at his shirt collar, which felt very stiff and uncomfortable. The fabric of the robes was awfully warm as well, but at least he'd managed not to fall into the lake on the trip led by Professor Grubbly-Plank across the dark water of the lake. It had been a close call, too, for the water had been quite choppy and the wind had a hint of rain in it, which Teddy hoped would wait until they'd reached the castle. The idea of being in a huge old castle in Scotland, full of ghosts and witches and wizards, during a violent thunderstorm gave him a wonderful shivery feeling inside.

He'd been anticipating this for so long it was hard to believe the day had finally come when he was arriving at Hogwarts as a first year, bearing the wand of his mysterious dead grandfather, whose name he _still_ did not know but was determined to learn as soon as he could. Surely someone else at the school would see the family resemblance, as Mr Ollivander had, and he'd finally learn where he'd come from and why he was magical when his mum was not. This gave him an even greater thrill than anticipating being in the castle during the storm.

"What d'you suppose they're gonna make us do?" the boy standing beside him whispered as they waited restlessly in the room to which Grubbly-Plank had led them. His name was Nate and Teddy had already made friends with him on the train. Nate's brown eyes were large with apprehension and Teddy swallowed and fingered his wand in his robe pocket, wondering what magical feats they'd have to perform to be Sorted into their houses.

"Dunno," Teddy said shortly. "Mum told me a few things, but she's a Muggle so she didn't come to Hogwarts and doesn't know a lot."

Nate snorted. "My mum _could_ have told me a lot, but she chose not to," he said bitterly, taking out his wand and admiring the rosewood handle. Nate had told Teddy on the train that his mother was a witch who'd taken up living as a Muggle on principle after his dad died. He'd grown up thinking he was a Muggle, not knowing his own mother could do magic or knowing anything _about_ magic until he'd received his Hogwarts letter and she'd had to explain it all. Unlike Teddy, Nate lived in London and knew a lot of other kids who lived with just their mums, as his mother worked at a private charity assisting single mothers, but he knew no one else like Teddy who didn't even know his father's _name_. They'd bonded immediately because of this, but it didn't hurt that everything was equally new to them both.

It seemed ages ago that Professor Snape had told them to wait to be admitted to the Great Hall and explained the house system to them (but not the Sorting). Teddy had resisted the urge to grin and wave at the Potions master but had given him a small smile instead, receiving a very small head-bob in return. Nate had asked him about this and Teddy had told him about the shopping trip to Diagon Alley, and how much he was looking forward to Potions, which was clearly taught by the coolest teacher in the school. Nate had merely said, "Huh," and looked at Professor Snape with a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

Finally, the doors to the Great Hall opened and Professor Snape led them down the centre of an enormous room with a ceiling that was a maelstrom of whirling dark grey clouds. Before the high table at the front sat a small stool with a tattered old hat on it. Everything Teddy saw made him grin ear to ear, from the floating candles to the elaborate robes and hats on the professors at the high table to the ghosts wafting about the rafters. He almost laughed out loud when the Sorting Hat began its song. _A singing hat!_ Everything seemed too good to be true. Teddy felt like he was living in a dream.

Nate was one of the earlier students called to the front. As he sat on the stool with the hat coming down onto his shoulders, completely obscuring his head, Teddy peered around a taller boy's shoulder. Nate was positively shaking with anticipation. In almost no time at all the hat was crying out, " _Gryffindor_!" eliciting another roar of approval from the very rowdy Gryffindor table, where three or four students had already been sorted.

It seemed to take an eternity for Professor Snape to get to "Harrison." When his name was read at last, Teddy stepped forward and sat on the stool, not noticing that the entire hall had gone very quiet for a long moment before erupting in hushed whispers that, cumulatively, started to sound like a distant avalanche. Once his head was inside the hat, however, Teddy could hear none of it. Instead he heard a voice in the darkness:

" _Ah, what have we here? Hmm… A good line, bravery in each generation, actions of historical significance, in fact. But you will forge your own path, yes indeed. I see greatness for you, if only you are not bound by the past. Here is one who was born for GRYFFINDOR!_ " the hat finally cried, making Teddy breathe a sigh of relief.

However, when he took off the hat, he discovered that the hall had gone utterly silent again. Even the Gryffindor table wasn't bursting with cheers and applause as when others were Sorted into that house. And then Teddy noticed that while many people in the hall were staring open-mouthed at _him_ , some seemed instead to be staring at a teacher at the high table.

One person began clapping; in the silence, the belated acknowledgement of his Sorting seemed forced and unnatural, though the rest of the Gryffindor table finally joined in, somewhat more subdued than they'd been earlier. Teddy walked nervously to the table and sat beside Nate, whose full name was _not_ Nathaniel or Nathan. Teddy had planned to tease him good-naturedly about it, but now that had flown out of his head.

Professor Snape called the next name, and the next and the next, until finally all of the first years were Sorted. Professor McGonagall stood to give the start of term notices. _Why does it seem that she's looking at me_?" Teddy wondered as he watched her and listened to her words. He didn't want to seem paranoid, however, by asking Nate whether _he_ thought the headmistress was staring at him in particular as she spoke. As it was, Teddy wasn't completely convinced it would be true paranoia to wonder why the other Gryffindors were almost uniformly leering at him and grinning at each other, whispering in each other's ears and giggling behind their hands when they saw him looking back.

He learned nothing by looking at the person at the high table who everyone else was staring at, either, for it seemed that they'd actually been looking at an empty chair beside a handsome woman with long red hair. It didn't help that this witch looked back at Teddy with open hostility when he met her eyes and he looked quickly away, hoping that she taught the older students and he wouldn't have to withstand that hate-filled glare during any of his lessons.

Suddenly, the doors of the Great Hall opened again and a sopping wet wizard stood in the doorway. All conversation stopped abruptly.

#/#/#

Harry looked around the hall, at the silent, staring faces. He'd sometimes reduced new students to gawping and giggling, but that usually stopped after he'd returned their first assignments, leaving no impression that he would be lenient, rest on his laurels, or give high marks in return for adulation and fawning.

However, he'd never had a reception quite like this on the first day of the term. He wasn't usually late, but after he'd picked up the girls at their school it had taken forever, it seemed, for them to collect everything they wanted from home. He was at pains to convince Rory that she could get anything that she had forgotten the next day after school. That was followed by a stomach-churning ride on the Knight Bus and arriving in Hogsmeade just as the skies opened. After their usual Thestral-drawn carriage brought them round the back of the castle, to the hidden door that led to their tower, Ruby had announced that Hades needed to go for a walk, so Harry took her and the damnable Crup once around the lake in the pouring rain. Rory came along seemingly for the purpose of sniffing disdainfully at Hades the entire time and complaining every time she got mud on her boots, which was constantly.

Dobby was charged with getting the girls their tea and supervising them until Harry and Ginny returned, and it was Harry's turn to tuck them up in their beds when the time came. However, for the moment he was free of parental responsibilities and was in such a hurry to get to what remained of the feast that he hadn't bothered to dry off.

 _I can't be that gruesome looking,_ he thought, frowning, as he walked through the silent hall, feeling the eyes of everyone present upon him as though he were actually being physically touched. The only sound other than his footsteps was of water dripping from his robe, landing with loud _plops_ on the stone flags.

Harry sat at the high table, glancing around nervously. Everyone was staring at _him_. He whispered to Ginny, " _What in Merlin's name is going on_?" Ginny neither looked at him nor answered. She resumed cutting her half-eaten pork chop into miniscule pieces. The rasp of her knife and fork echoed through the otherwise silent hall.

"Ginny?" Harry whispered.

"Just eat," she mumbled, continuing to dissect her pork chop, not appearing to be interested in eating it. He looked around the hall. Anyone who wasn't gawping at him seemed to be looking at the Gryffindor table, but all Harry could see were the tallest, oldest students' backs when he looked there himself, and he didn't want to make himself more conspicuous by standing and craning his neck, so he told himself—though he didn't believe it—that it was nothing.

As he reached for some chicken he turned and caught Professor McGonagall's eye. She gave him a very arch sort of glare and turned away from him. The chattering conversation eventually started up again, but there was a palpable tension in the hall that made Harry very nervous. He still had no idea why he and the Gryffindor table were being stared at. Perhaps it was because he was the head of Gryffindor house? But that wasn't really a reason.

And Ginny still would not look at him.

Finally, Professor McGonagall stood to remind the students of more forbidden objects added to Filch's interminable list, they sang the new school song that they'd started using after the defeat of Voldemort, written by the Sorting Hat itself (it had just one tune), and then the prefects led the youngest students from the hall first, followed by the others.

Amidst the bustle of the students departing, Harry turned to Ginny again, saying, "Care to tell me what was going on before?"

" _Not here_ ," she said tersely as she stood and turned toward a tapestry concealing a door leading to their tower. She seemed quite cross. No, not just cross, _livid_. He followed, hesitating for a moment. They went up flight after flight of curving stone stairs with torches flickering in brackets on the walls, casting wild shadows on her stiff, straight back. He felt like he really _was_ going to a detention with Professor Weasley, but he doubted that it would be as enjoyable as the one from the morning.

No moon shone through the oculus topping the stairs; huge drops of rain battered the glass dome. Ginny turned to glance at him for a moment, her hand on the knob to the sitting room. A bolt of lightning crackled through the dark sky, throwing her features into high relief, revealing that she had been crying while climbing the stairs. This surprised him, as she'd looked angry in the Great Hall. Was she cross with him or distraught? And _why_?

Dobby had left the candles burning in the sconces high on the walls and a friendly fire crackled in the grate. _The Daily Prophet_ had been left on his armchair and his slippers and Ginny's were warming on the hearthrug. More than anything else, he wanted a long bath and a good night's sleep, but he suspected that he would have neither.

Ginny mumbled, "I'll tell Dobby he can go when I check on the girls," and slipped from the room, tacitly letting him know that he was in fact _not_ tucking the girls in tonight. Harry settled into his armchair, idly slapping his thighs with the unread newspaper. Eventually he looked at his watch and found that her checking on Ruby and Rory had stretched into half an hour, so he decided to look for her.

The door to the girls' room was slightly ajar. To his surprise, when he opened the door a little more, Ginny was nowhere to be found. Ruby and Rory were fast asleep in their beds, Hades curled into a small circle on Ruby's. Then, above the steady breathing of the two girls and the sleeping Crup, Harry heard a soft sobbing. He glanced around the door; Ginny was in an armchair near the small stove in the corner that provided heat to the draughty room.

"Ginny?" he whispered tentatively. She jerked her head up suddenly, abruptly wiping the tears from her cheeks, her eyes narrowing again. "What are you—?"

"Ssssh!" she hissed, going to Rory's bed and leaning over to kiss her gently. She moved to Ruby's bed and kissed her as well, even patting the Crup on the head. He left, returning to the sitting room ahead of Ginny, hearing her light footsteps following him. When he turned to face her his stomach was in knots and he wondered again what was going on.

"Ginny," he said, "are you pregnant again? Did you just find out? You were fine this morning. I know you said after the twins you didn't want to have more—"

"Ha!" Ginny burst out, wiping a tear from her cheek again. "How funny that the first thing you think of is that you got _someone_ pregnant!"

But her tone of voice said that _she_ didn't think this funny at all. "What are you talking about? What do you mean _someone_? You're the only _someone_ I ever—"

Ginny tried to laugh but it ended on a choked sob. "Until tonight, that's what I thought as well. I thought you'd been honest with me. You weren't even my boyfriend—"

"What _are_ you on about, Ginny?" he said as evenly as he could. She had a wild look in her eye and he didn't know whether she'd soon be making things in the room explode.

"What am I on about? You didn't see him, did you?" He could tell that she was trying to be fierce, but her voice was also shaking.

"See _who_ , Ginny?" he said softly.

"Stop saying my name over and over!" she growled. "I don't have bloody amnesia. I know who I am. The question is—who are _you_?"

Harry didn't know what to say. Maintaining his composure was growing more difficult by the moment. "Wh-what? I'm—I'm just _Harry_. And who didn't I see?"

"Oh, _just Harry_?" she said archly. "And which Harry would that _be_ , exactly? The Harry who spends a fortnight falling for a woman twice his age and then shows up in London with a tale about unrequited love? Or the Harry who fathered a child with his former teacher and pretended that he was still a virgin when he was nearly _nineteen_?"

Harry couldn't believe what she'd said. Was she mad? "Fathered a— _what_?"

She was crying again and looked cross about the fact that she was crying. "Your _son_ walked into the Great Hall tonight and was Sorted into Gryffindor. His name is Theodore _Harrison_."

Harry stared. "What are you talking about? That's impossible! I told you everything that happened between me and Tilda! And everything that _didn't_ happen, as well. Are you telling me that just because a kid walks into this castle with messy dark hair and the _incredibly_ common name of _Harrison_ that you automatically assume he _has_ to be my and Tilda's son? Are we going to assume next that everyone in Britain who's called Evans is my cousin?" he spat. "Or that every Potter is my long-lost uncle?"

"You didn't _see_ him," she said, less stridently. "He looks _exactly_ like you."

Harry frowned. "So what? They say everyone has their double somewhere."

"Your double just _happens_ to be the right age to have been born in the year after your sixteenth birthday? And he _happens_ to be called _Harrison_?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't know when this kid was born, and neither do you! We'll ask Minerva tomorrow, all right? I told you the truth when I got back from Surrey, I swear I did. You weren't even my girlfriend yet. I had no reason to lie to you—"

"Oh!" she exclaimed, suddenly going red again. "You didn't have a reason to lie to me _yet_. So—did the 'Falsehood Fest' begin _after_ I became your girlfriend?"

"N-no!" Harry sputtered. "Ginny—this is mad. I've only ever slept with _one woman_ , and that's _you_. I'll swear to it if you like. Tomorrow we can get Snape to give me Veritaserum. I mean, don't you think I'd remem—" He froze, staring in horror at her as a terrible realisation swept over him.

Ginny still looked sceptical. "What? You just remembered, 'Oh, I _did_ shag my old teacher after all'?"

Harry shook his head, staring past her into space, trying to gather his thoughts. "No," he said vaguely as a theory took form in his mind. "No, I stopped because— _Snape_."

"What about Snape?"

"After the battle. Dumbledore told me that Snape was going to modify Tilda's memory. But what if that's not _all_ he modified?"

#/#/#

Nate looked around the Gryffindor common room, nodding. "Not bad. Not bad at all."

A tall, thin girl with lanky blonde hair, rather thick glasses and painful-looking red spots on her brow sniffed disdainfully. "If you don't mind dark and draughty, like the rest of this place. And where's the telly? And the computers?"

Nate looked at her as though she was barmy. "Did you read _any_ of your books before you came? There's no television. No computers, either." He rolled his eyes and Teddy fought the urge to snigger. It became very easy to suppress his laughter, however, once he caught the eye of the strange girl who'd just spoken.

"Well, we can't all be the sort of wanker who spends his summer holiday _reading_ ," she sneered with an eye-roll of her own. "And some of us are used to _civilisation_ , not this backwards way of doing everything," she added, nodding at the candles on the walls.

Teddy and Nate both stared at her, open-mouthed. Nate breathed, " _You are an idiot_."

"Oh, that's charming. There _are_ other people in the world who don't do everything like you do, and who have different opinions. Are they _all_ idiots?" she demanded.

"Only the ones who are _you_ ," Nate retorted promptly. "And I've been living as a Muggle as well, so I know what you're used to and what you're missing. I won't be able to watch television or use my mum's computer until the Christmas holiday, but you don't hear me complaining. Wouldn't you rather be learning magic instead of doing that stuff?"

She sniffed. "Learning magic! Why do we need to go to a ruddy school for it? I'm magical. Tell me something I don't know. I've been doing weird things since I was six. But if I'd gone to my sister's school with a magic wand, I could really have had some fun. I'd skive off lessons whenever I wanted and make other kids do my homework."

Nate made a face. "I'd say you should be in Slytherin, rather than Gryffindor, but I like someone who's a Slytherin and don't want to lump him in with _you_. I can tell why you're not in Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw," he added, laughing.

She looked at him balefully. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

"You _really_ don't pay attention to anything, do you?" Nate said in disgust.

"I know that the house names are some of the stupidest things I've ever heard. _Hufflepuff_? And ours— _Gryffindor_?"

When they'd first entered the common room in a throng of first and second years, just a few people had stared at Teddy and whispered behind their hands. Now that more older students had entered people were craning their necks and whispering loudly while examining him, making him feel very uncomfortable. He squirmed, not joining the conversation.

"They aren't stupid names," Nate shot back. " _You're_ the one with a stupid name, _Madonna_. I heard it during the Sorting!" he guffawed.

"I'm called _Donna_ ," she said, suddenly sheepish about this. "My mum likes her music and wanted me to be a singer, but I can't—" she mumbled, trailing off.

"You can't sing?" Nate laughed. "Yeah, I'm so shocked."

"Talking of names, what about _yours_?" she shot back.

"What about it? I'm called _Nate_. What's wrong with that?"

"No, you git, your full name. I heard _yours_ during the Sorting as well."

Nate had put his face very close to hers. "Well? You have something to say about it?"

Donna backed away nervously. "Erm, well, I don't remember what it was, but I remember that it was _stupid_."

Teddy shuffled his feet, deciding that he wouldn't tease Nate about his name after all. He also wished that Nate would stop rowing with her so they could go up to their dormitory—although that would mean going through the throng of older Gryffindors starting to press on them, gawping and whispering. Some of the 'whispers' were rather loud.

"Oi!" said a tall boy wearing a prefect's badge on his long black robes. "Is it true? You're Harry Potter's kid?"

Teddy froze; he had no idea what to say. He'd heard some of the other Gryffindors whispering the name _Harry Potter_ during the feast, and he'd eventually worked out that this was the name of the wizard who had arrived late. He looked desperately at Nate, but to his surprise it was Donna who stepped between him and the prefect.

"Clear off! Isn't it bad enough that we've all been as good as kidnapped and taken off to some medieval nightmare of a school without a body being gawped at by eejits?"

The prefect was very tall, with sandy hair and a coarse stubble on his heavy jaw. His robes positively seemed to bulge with muscles and though Teddy had thought Donna was tall she didn't even come up to the prefect's badge. Beside him she looked as insubstantial as the handle of a broomstick. In fact, with her unruly straw-coloured hair she appeared to _be_ a broomstick standing on end and wearing a Hogwarts robe.

"Want a detention, do yer?" the prefect asked her, glowering. Donna took another step forward and poked him in the chest. She had to hold her hand at eye-level to do this.

"Want me to tell the headmistress that you're abusing your position?" She turned to Teddy. "See you tomorrow. You'd better go up to your dormitory now."

Teddy nodded and went to the stairs labelled BOYS, Nate trailing behind him, grunting at the crowd, "Oi! Move out of the way! Can't a bloke go to bed?"

When they reached the door labelled FIRST YEARS they entered a large round room with seven four-poster beds hung with red velvet curtains, a fire crackling in the stove in the centre of the room. A candle on each boy's bedside table sent flickering shadows over everything. Trunks were in place before each bed. Two other boys were already taking their pyjamas from theirs and Teddy did the same. When stared at Teddy, Nate yelled, "Sod off!" and they turned away, making disgruntled noises.

"You all right?" Nate asked him uncertainly when they were about to get into their beds.

Teddy shrugged. "I reckon. And maybe it isn't such a mystery that Donna's in Gryffindor after all," he said, remembering what the Sorting Hat had sung about earlier.

Nate grimaced. "Maybe," he said grudgingly.

The door opened again and three more boys entered; Teddy immediately pulled his curtains closed, saying through the red velvet, "G'night, Nate. See you in the morning."

"Night, Ted."

Teddy settled down to sleep, curled in a ball with his fists under his pillow. After receiving his Hogwarts letter, he'd dreamt of coming to magic school. Now he wondered whether he was in for seven years of trouble. At least when he'd been in primary school, he had a respite at the end of every day and on the weekends, returning to his comfortably shabby home, with his mother and Beatrice and Dorothy, riding his horse Minnie and sleeping at night in his own familiar bed that looked out over the sheep-manicured fields of Latere Farm. Now at the end of the day he was trapped in a dormitory with six other boys he barely knew, including Nate. He had an unsettled feeling in his middle that made him think he should have eaten a bit less in the Great Hall. Perhaps he would always feel that way now. He certainly didn't feel like it was going away soon.

Listening to Nate's peaceful snores, he tried to ignore the whispers of the other boys, but their words echoed in his head even as he slept, permeating his dreams.

 _Harry Potter…Harry Potter…Harry Potter…_

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	23. Part of the Problem

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Twenty-Three**

 **Part of the Problem**

 **#/#/#**

Ginny sat on the edge of the armchair by the fire, rocking, her arms hugging her legs as though she was cold. "What are you suggesting?"

Harry was glad to hear a hopeful note in her voice. He paced the hearthrug nervously, massaging his temples. "I'm trying to _think_. I remember feeling that it was very queer that Dumbledore didn't want me to contact Tilda at all, not even to ask after her."

"So you think _he_ shagged her too?" Ginny sneered. The sceptical tone had returned. Harry decided not to let this bother him.

"No, no. I'm just wondering… There's Snape, about to modify her memory. She's probably still unconscious. He can look into her mind and see what nearly happened between us. The next thing you know…"

"You mean— _Harry_. You can't be serious."

He grimaced, thinking about Snape some more. "You're right. If he did that he wouldn't be able to convince himself that he'd done nothing wrong. Imperius, then."

"That wasn't what I meant—"

"—so he could labour under the delusion that she really wanted him."

"You're saying that that boy is _Snape's_ son, not yours? Well, I hate to break it to you, Harry, but he walked into the Great Hall wearing _your_ face, not Snape's."

A sudden epiphany lit up his brain. "Polyjuice! Ginny—remember when we found out what those cauldrons were in the twins' shop? They kept batches of Polyjuice going all the time so there would always be enough for the Order. Bill was using it to look like Rodolphus Lestrange, and Dung was being Lucius Malfoy. I'll bet they had extra with them. Snape could have nicked it. Or maybe he carried the extra. It wouldn't have been hard for him to find a hair of mine on Tilda's couch—easy to tell it from hers…"

"But still, Harry, would a child conceived while the father was using Polyjuice Potion look like the real father or the person he was pretending to be?"

"That's what we don't know, do we? Or didn't, until now. I think that boy is proof that when you become the other person, you _are_ that person, physically, down to the last atom, if you know what I mean."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know what you mean. All right, just suppose that he did what you're suggesting. Why would Tilda agree to sleep with someone she thought was you when you told me she'd already decided it was a dreadful idea? He would still have looked like a sixteen-year-old Harry Potter, and she'd already rejected him. Erm, you."

"That's where I think Imperius comes into it. He'd love it, Snape would, knowing that I'd wanted her and that it hadn't happened between us but he _did_ manage to have her…"

"Harry!" Ginny snapped. "Stop talking about her that way! She's a human being."

Harry reddened. "Sorry. I just meant—he'd enjoy knowing that. The great git never got past his resentment of my dad and always liked knowing that he was thwarting me in some way, when he could, and when he couldn't it drove him _mad_. I think he _hated_ having to be on the same side as me, especially knowing that I was supposed to be the one to get rid of Voldemort, unless Voldemort got rid of me first, which would have made Snape pretty happy if it didn't mean Voldemort actually being unstoppable after that. Doing this gave him a way to get revenge without risking the war turning in Voldemort's favor."

Ginny made a face. "It sounds like _you're_ the one who can't let go of a grudge, and the Quidditch Final last term is only a part of that," she added. Harry turned away, ashamed of his behaviour during the match Gryffindor had played against Slytherin five months earlier. "I mean," she went on, "it's so far-fetched! Snape sleeping with her while looking like you, producing a son who also looks like you?"

"Ask Hermione! She'd know. She's so obsessed with the conception of babies."

"Which is why I dread her finding out that you've got another kid you weren't trying for."

"Ginny, I haven't got—"

"Harry, even if Snape 'borrowed' your appearance and that's why that boy exists, that still means that he's your son. Although," she added, snorting, "I still think it _is_ quite ludicrous, the idea that he could have done that."

"Ludicrous? Far-fetched? Would you have thought it far-fetched if, the first time we thought it was Mad-Eye Moody walking into the Great Hall, someone had said, 'You're an impostor! You're a Death Eater who tortured the Longbottoms! You were supposed to have died in Azkaban!'"

"Someone mention my name?"

" _No_!" Harry and Ginny said simultaneously to the greyish-white ghost who had just drifted through the stone wall beside the fireplace.

The ghost of Alastor Moody grunted sceptically. "I could have sworn—"

"Moody, this really isn't the time," Harry ground out between his teeth.

"Yes, Alastor, do you think you could give us some privacy?" Ginny asked him gently.

"Of course. I'll check on the wee bairns. Not so wee anymore, though, aye?"

He winked his ghostly eye at them—the non-magic one—and drifted through the wall. Harry wished Moody would leave them alone for once. They could barely talk at St Clare's without a contribution from him _and_ he followed them to Hogwarts each September. Harry had not told Hermione that Moody's interference was yet another reason why he and Ginny had had so much trouble being alone during his seventh year.

When Moody was gone Ginny looked at Harry. "It's true that an impostor was teaching us that year and if anyone had suggested that they would have sounded ridiculous. But I think your theory about Snape is far-fetched because he simply _would not do that_. He's not the monster you think he is, or even the monster I used to think he was. He treats me civilly, like a respected colleague, and I'm a baby compared to the others on the staff! Honestly, Harry, you don't give him enough credit."

"You give him too much!" he growled. "I wouldn't put anything past him. I don't care if Snape pretending to be me when that boy was conceived means some people would call him my biological son. _He's not_. He's Snape's son. He has nothing to do with me!"

Ginny shook her head in disgust. "I'm going to bed. I'm tired and I can't keep going round and round with you on this. Are you coming?"

Her voice didn't sound very welcoming so Harry mumbled to the fire, "I'll be in." She was in the habit of kissing him on the brow when she went to bed before him, but this night she did not do it. She left the room silently, without looking back.

Harry felt a horrid emptiness in his chest. _Snape_ , he thought furiously. _You'll pay for what you've done_.

He dozed off before the fire and dreamt that Moody found him and said to him, " _Potter, you are that boy's father and no mistake. If you weren't, I would not be a ghost_ …"

Jerking his head up, Harry glanced around the room, but Alastor Moody's ghost was nowhere to be seen. He dragged himself to bed, finding Ginny asleep, breathing softly. He wished he'd handled things better than he had, that he'd found the words to explain to her, _I would never have lied if I had slept with Tilda, Ginny. You're the one person I always felt I could talk to, even when we were just friends_. He had never told Ron and Hermione all about Tilda, nor Neville, though he had opened up to Luna once, explaining to her why he'd tried to ask her out. He knew she'd never tell Ron if he asked her not to, and she'd kept her word.

He climbed into bed, wishing he dared to take her sleeping form in his arms. Instead he stared at the back of her head, thinking of waking up in their bed together that morning and hoping that when he opened his eyes again he would discover that this entire day had been a nightmare and they hadn't yet come to Hogwarts for the new term.

#/#/#

"Where is he?" Nate whispered to Teddy as he spooned porridge into his mouth.

"Who?" Teddy reached for a piece of toast and looked around for a jam pot. His stomach not only felt fine this morning, much to his surprise, but when he reached the Great Hall and smelled the food on the house tables he found that he was absolutely ravenous.

"He means the bloke everyone thinks is your dad," Donna informed him airily, sitting across from them, calmly eating eggs and bacon.

"Oh," Teddy said, reddening. He looked at the head table; Potter's chair was empty this morning. Others were empty as well, but for some reason it seemed significant that Potter was not there. "Dunno," he mumbled, spreading jam on his toast. He nodded at Donna, wanting to change the subject. "So—have you had trouble with your name? You know, because of _her_?"

Donna chewed and swallowed. "Sometimes. I get tired of being asked to sing, or bless people. Joke. What's stupid is my mum isn't even religious. Well, except about celebrities. She didn't even know there was _another_ 'Madonna.'"

"Bloody hell," Nate breathed. He seemed slightly less hostile toward her this morning.

"I know! Luckily, Mum ignored the phase _she_ went through a few years back, when she decided to rename herself _Esther_. Thank goodness Mum didn't change _my_ name to Esther as well. Come to that, _Madonna's_ not so bad after all."

Teddy laughed but then stifled it. "Sorry. I'm not laughing at your name, really. Or your mum. Actually—I'm not even sure my mum would know a single song by Madonna. She only likes things from the sixties and seventies. Sometimes I feel like I'm going spare trying to get her to listen to something more recent."

"How old is your mum?" Donna asked, putting a forkful of fried egg in her mouth.

"Forty-four. Which isn't really old for a mum, I know, but she _seems_ older, since she's always harking back to when she was young."

"That's not old," Donna agreed. "My mum's almost forty. But she wouldn't dream of listening to anything from earlier than ten years ago, except for Madonna's stuff. She thinks that's what should be meant when anyone talks about 'classical' music."

Nate shook his head. "Forty and forty-four sound old to me. My mum's thirty-two."

Teddy raised his eyebrows. "Thirty-two! That's a year younger than my mum was when she _had_ me. She was almost thirty-three. Crikey. Thirty-two?"

Nate shrugged. "She had me when she was pretty young. And I'll be twelve on Halloween. It's not bad having a young mum. The blokes still notice her and all. I nearly had a step-dad about five years ago, but then the whole thing fell through."

Teddy made a face. "I hate it when my mum dates. Slimy gits! They all—they only have one thing on their minds," he added, feeling his face turn red as he took a bite of toast. Donna smiled knowingly at him. "What?" he asked her, feeling testy.

"Nothing," she said innocently, widening her eyes behind her thick glasses.

A boy from his dormitory sat beside her, smirking and nudging the large prefect from the previous evening. The boy resembled the prefect and Teddy realised that they were probably brothers. He tried to ignore them, but it was difficult. They kept smirking, glancing at him, whispering behind their hands and smirking some more. He wished the bell for the end of breakfast would ring _now_. He glanced up at the head table again: no Potter.

The whispering and smirking persisted. He finished his toast. And still the bell did not ring.

#/#/#

"I need to speak to you."

Harry was blocking Snape's access to the stairs leading to the Great Hall. "That may be, Potter, but what I need is to enjoy my breakfast before the first lesson of the day."

Harry couldn't remember Snape appearing to 'enjoy' any meal, so he felt no guilt about saying, "I'm afraid not, Snape. You can eat in your office while we're talking."

Snape raised one eyebrow. "Or—what?"

"Or I shall pay Rita Skeeter a little visit and explain to her that the boy who walked into the Great Hall looking like me is really _your_ son."

Snape did not change expression but turned on his heel and strode down the corridor to the Potions dungeon, his words echoing in the stark, stone space: "Very well, Potter. I haven't heard a good tall tale in a long time. Whatever outlandish explanation you have for what you just said should at any rate prove somewhat diverting."

When Harry had awoken that morning, after a fitful night with dreams he wanted very much to forget, he had decided that the first thing he needed to do was confront Snape. He left Ginny in their bed, snoring softly, while he dressed and went down to the entrance hall and then to the foot of the stairs leading to the entrance hall from the dungeons so he could waylay Snape on his way to breakfast. He followed Snape to his office now, slamming the door behind him.

"It isn't a _tall tale_ , Snape. You want to know what is a tall tale? That boy being my son when the only woman I've ever been with is my _wife._ "

Snape stood behind his desk while Harry paced the floor on the other side. "Potter, speaking of your wife, I should remind you that I am not she. There is no need for you to insist here that she is the only woman you ever—"

"But she is!" Harry cried in frustration. "And you know it. Erm, or at least you know that I didn't sleep with Tilda Harrison when I was sixteen."

Snape sat and put his fingertips together. "Oh, I know this, do I?"

"Yes! You used Legilimency to find out that we—that we almost—but we didn't—"

"Almost?" Snape said softly, the corner of his mouth turning up ever so slightly.

"You know this!" Harry spat hotly. "You took enormous pleasure in knowing that you'd be doing what I'd wanted to do and _hadn't_."

"I see," Snape said slowly, leaning forward so that his face was in shadow. "Perhaps you'd care to tell me exactly what I did, Potter. What, precisely, did I take 'enormous pleasure' in doing?" His mouth twisted as he lifted his face to Harry's, his black eyes glittering. Harry wanted to hex the smug expression from his face.

Harry told him his theory, still pacing furiously, too full of pent-up rage to sit, and certainly too infuriated to look at Snape while he spoke, though he was vaguely aware of the bemused expression on the Potions master's face. When he had finished speaking he turned to face Snape head-on again; he looked more 'diverted' than Harry had ever seen him.

"So, Potter, I ascertained that you and Miss Harrison, erm, _almost_ ; I used Polyjuice Potion to take on your likeness; placed the Imperius Curse on her; and then fathered a child who would appear, to all intents and purposes, to be yours?"

Harry's hand was in his pocket, his fingers wrapped tightly around the handle of his wand. _Give me a reason, you slimy git_. "You heard what I said," Harry growled. "You've been caught, Snape. Now would be a good time to confess."

To his surprise Snape produced a sound Harry had never heard come out of his mouth: uproarious laughter. It was very brief, however. Snape was once again regarding him with just the edge of his mouth slightly turned up, his perennially bemused expression back in place. "I have nothing to confess, Potter. Of course I did not do what you are suggesting. I am not a monster, contrary to what you obviously believe."

Harry snorted. "Yeah, that's what Ginny said."

"Perhaps you should listen to your wife. I can assure you that even had I the opportunity to have physical relations with a Muggle woman I would not have done so. I seldom pursue women at all, due to my job, but when I do it is witches only. And before you accuse me of being anti-Muggle, that is because I do not wish to enmesh myself in a web of lies to hide the magical world or the nature of my job. It is very simple."

Harry snorted. "Yeah, life can be so simple, can't it, when you pretend to be someone else to shag a woman, don't take precautions, and ignore your son for eleven years."

To his surprise Snape's face turned red with fury and he stood, fists planted on the desk. "I'll have you know that I do everything in my power to find wizards who father children with Muggle women. I see to it that the Ministry forces them to pay for the upkeep of their children. I would not only never have relations with someone under the influence of Imperius and under the impression that I was someone else but I take _care_ of _my_ son, and when he comes to Hogwarts I shall pay for everything he needs. I take him on excursions during my holidays, in which we also include his older brother, whose father is dead. Don't you dare tell me that I am a negligent father, Potter, because you know absolutely nothing about it," he growled, still red-faced.

Harry had never been more shocked in his life. "You're damn right I know nothing about it. You—you're a _dad_?" Harry couldn't process this information.

Snape gave a very small nod as he sat. "And now you know far more than I ever intended anyone to know about my private life. But it is all you are _going_ to know. If you tell anyone about this you will be very sorry. And I won't go to _Rita Skeeter_ to give you your comeuppance," he added, the threat clear in his voice.

Harry was still speechless. _Snape a dad._ When he thought it, it sounded just as barmy inside his head. "I thought you just said that you considered Muggle women off-limits," he finally said, still reeling.

Snape gave him an exasperated look. "My son's mother is a _witch_ , Potter," he said as though speaking to a complete idiot. Harry felt like one. He'd lost his train of thought, but Snape wasn't done yet. "I find it fascinating that when a child turns up looking like _you_ , I am the first person of whom you think. Might I remind you that you did not master Occlumency— _finally_ —until more than eighteen months after your sixteenth birthday?" he said, bringing back some painful memories for Harry. "The Dark Lord," Snape continued, " _possessed_ you not two months earlier at the Ministry of Magic. Yet the first _suspect_ you think of who might be responsible is—"

"I get it, I get it!" Harry snarled, feeling like his stupidity was increasing by the second.

"So, Potter—I believe that you have a lesson to teach in a few minutes, as do I. I hope we have laid to rest this absurd idea. Excuse me while I prepare to _do my job_."

Harry pulled open the office door as the first bell rang. He had nothing to say to Snape. Harry hated it when he was right. He should have thought of Voldemort! Which meant that he _had_ lied to Ginny, in a way. _He_ was responsible for the boy existing, not Snape in disguise. He had been under Voldemort's control and didn't even remember. As he took the stairs two at a time—using a concealed spiral staircase that allowed him to avoid the entrance hall—he thought about what must have happened.

He reached the Defence against the Dark Arts classroom after the second bell had rung. The students were already seated, scribbling notes that Ginny had magically caused to appear on the blackboard. When she saw him in the doorway she rushed into the corridor, tight-lipped, and closed the classroom door, glancing through the glass for a moment at the heads bent over their parchments, quills scratching away.

Pulling Harry away from the door, she hissed, "Where have you _been_? It was your turn to get the girls up and ready for school! I thought that was what you were doing when I woke and you weren't there. Then my mum showed up to take them to Hogsmeade to catch the bus and we discovered that they were still asleep in their beds! _And_ I found that on the _first day of the term_ Ruby had already brought home a letter from the headmistress, which I had to sign and return even though I didn't have enough time to read it properly. One of us is supposed to go to the school to speak with the headmistress later this week. Do you _think_ you could manage to do that?"

He swallowed and nodded. "Of course. I'm sorry I was late getting up here, Ginny, and that I forgot about waking the girls up. I went to the dungeons to speak to Snape."

"Did he kick you out of his office? Or hex you? Because if he didn't he should have." Her eyes were very hard and he could not look at her so he glanced at the door to the classroom.

"Well, he denied that he'd pretended to be me to sleep with Tilda and he pointed out that—that at the time Voldemort was still able to possess me."

Ginny covered her mouth in horror, no longer looking like she wanted to hex him on Snape's behalf. "Oh, Harry, that means—"

"—that Harrison probably really is my kid. But I was being controlled by—by—"

Harry froze. Ginny searched his face. "What?"

"Well, what if there's some Voldemort in him? When Voldemort tried to kill me, I got some of his magical abilities. Oh!" he exclaimed. "What if—what if the boy is a Parselmouth?"

"What if he is?" Ginny responded with a sniff. "You say that like it's a bad thing. You saved my life by being a Parselmouth, Harry." Though she said the words, it sounded like a reluctant admission. He did not yet feel like he had got back into her good graces.

Smiling affectionately at her, he took her hand. "I'm glad. But—it's still hard not to feel like this was all my fault. If I hadn't hidden in Tilda's house, if I—"

"—if I hadn't written in an evil diary," Ginny said, exasperated, pulling her hand from his. "We were possessed, Harry. And people could have died because of me—"

"Someone _did_ die because of me, Ginny." He mouthed _Moody_ at her, looking around furtively, hoping old Mad-Eye was off drifting through walls and listening to Nearly Headless Nick complain about the Headless Hunt.

"Well, speaking of Harrison," she said briskly, clearly not in the mood to offer him comfort or reassurance, "he and the other first year Gryffindors are waiting, so—"

" _What_? The first year Gryffindors? I can't go in there, Ginny!"

She looked at him with one eyebrow raised. "Erm, you're the _head_ of Gryffindor, Harry. Remember what that's all about? Bravery, courage, and all that rot?"

He grimaced and sighed. "I know, but—" He looked at the door with trepidation. Sighing again, he whispered, "All right. I can do this."

Ginny stood at the door, hand on the knob. "Come on, slowcoach! They're waiting."

 _How bad could it be?_ He took a deep breath and followed her into the classroom.

#/#/#

The first words Harry heard when he entered the room were, " _You take that back!_ "

Theodore Harrison had his hands around the neck of a beefy boy at least six inches taller than he was whom Harry suspected was yet another Carlisle brother. (The other two—peas in a pod except for their heights—were prefects in fifth and seventh years and were the Beaters on the Gryffindor house team.) A boy with curly reddish-brown hair and a face crowded with freckles tugged ineffectually on Harrison's left arm while a scrawny blonde girl with thick glasses and spots on her brow pulled on the back of his robes. Another boy and girl tried to pull the boy off Harrison's arm. A slight girl with a short cap of shining black hair tugged on Harrison's right arm, fighting off two even smaller girls who didn't want her doing this, and _three_ boys were trying to remove the skinny blonde girl from Harrison's robes. Three other girls who seemed mainly concerned with their appearance (they were using their wands as mirrors) stood off to the side, sniffing disdainfully as they checked their reflections.

" _Expelliarmus! Expelliarmus! Expelliarmus!_ " Harry and Ginny both cried, waving their wands, causing the students to lose their grips on each other and fall backwards in a ring around the central pair. The bystander girls stepped back with disgusted expressions on their faces, smoothing down their robes. The others groaned and tried to get to their feet without stepping on each other, but there were many cries of pain anyway.

Harry found it very, very difficult to look at Harrison. It was too strange, reminding him of the time he'd seen his dad in a memory of Snape's in a Pensieve, though he'd had the advantage there, since his dad had only been a memory and couldn't see _him_. Instead he concentrated on the tall boy, still fully aware of Harrison out of the corner of his eye.

"Carlisle! You are another Carlisle, I assume?" he said to the boy, who nodded vigorously, eyes wide. "All right, then. Carlisle: What did you say that Harrison wanted you to 'take back'?" He could see that the boy was shaking. His older brothers were full of bluster as well, he'd discovered, until confronted with an authority figure. Carlisle said nothing but looked at his feet. "Anyone else?" Harry said, looking around at the others but carefully avoiding Harrison's eyes. "Can _anyone_ tell me what started this?"

The silence in the room was punctuated by the nervous rustling of robes, shuffling of feet and the occasional soft cough, carefully stifled to avoid drawing Harry's attention. Except for Harrison, at whom he finally looked in case _he_ wanted to reveal what had happened, they all looked back at him blankly. Harrison gazed at the floor.

"Very well!" Harry finally said, walking to the front, where Ginny stood before the blackboard, her wand still in her hand. "Fifty points from Gryffindor. You are all to report to Mr Filch in the Trophy Room at eight o'clock for detention." He didn't look at them now but could hear their indignant gasps.

"But sir," a blonde bystander girl said, raising her hand. She was utterly unlike the girl with the glasses, appearing to have just stepped out of a beauty salon. " _We_ weren't doing anything," she said, pointing at her friends, equally poised and well-coifed.

Harry nodded at her. "Exactly, Miss—"

"Gibson. We were just standing here, and—"

"Yes, Miss Gibson. As you will learn in Defence against the Dark Arts," he said, tapping Ginny's notes on the blackboard, "there are no innocent bystanders in a situation like this. You are either part of the problem or part of the solution. Were you part of the solution?"

"Erm, no?" she said uncertainly.

"Then you were part of the problem," Harry pronounced briskly. "Would _you_ care to tell me what Carlisle said to Harrison?"

But Miss Gibson shook her head quickly, her mouth clamped shut. Harry nodded, expecting as much. "I shall inform the headmistress that Mr Filch is to expect all of you at eight o'clock. You shall polish every single award given since the beginning of the school until they shine like new." He said in an undertone to Ginny, "I need to discuss something else with Minerva as well. Can you take the lesson?"

She nodded, still looking very grim. "Yes, of course."

#/#/#

After Harry strode from the room Ginny turned to the students, who had still not moved. "Back in your seats!" She clapped her hands. "Have you copied the notes?"

They shook their heads. Harrison sat, pulling his parchment toward him again. Ink had spilled all over it and he grimaced. Ginny pulled out her wand and waved it, causing the inkpot to right itself and jump backward. The spilled ink disappeared from the parchment. Harrison looked up at her in surprise but it was she who had the surprise of her life when she felt something move within her at the sight of his familiar face. As she sat at her desk, waiting for them to finish their copying, she looked at her notes with unseeing eyes, feeling like she suddenly understood Hermione in a way she never had.

#/#/#

Lunch at the Gryffindor table was highly uncomfortable for Teddy. Word had got round that the first years had cost their house _fifty_ points during their first lesson. The general consensus was that it was Teddy's fault. Most of the first years, apart from Nate and Donna, seemed to share this view, plus the view that it was Teddy's fault that they had detention. Teddy felt very cross. No one blamed Carlisle.

After lunch, when he was walking down the stairs to the dungeons, Carlisle stuck his foot in front of Teddy. He stumbled on the last stair and went sprawling, his books and parchments flying out of his bag. The others laughed and walked past him without offering any assistance while Nate and Donna scrambled about, picking up his things.

As they stood outside the dungeon, waiting to be admitted, Carlisle pushed Teddy, saying, "Oi, can't even walk downstairs without falling, yeah, Harrison? You know what they say about bad blood. It's probably because your mum's a—"

"Don't say it!" Donna warned him with a growl in her voice. "You're brave now but you couldn't tell Potter what you said about Ted's mum, could you?"

"If it weren't for you," Carlisle said to Teddy, "we'd still _have_ Potter for our professor! Thanks to you we shan't be taught by the most famous wizard in the world!"

Teddy frowned at him. "What are you on about?"

"Didn't hear? He and Weasley made a deal. She'll teach us—alone—and he'll teach the first year Slytherins— _alone_. Everyone in the school has him for their Defence professor except for _us_. He doesn't want to be in the same room with his bast—"

"No!" Donna and Nate cried, grunting as they pulled on Teddy's arms with all their might while he struggled to reach Carlisle again.

"Shut up!" Teddy cried. " _Shut up!_ " He shook with rage.

The Slytherins had arrived, watching the tableau before them with interest. "Need help here?" a tall dark-haired boy asked. He had a very horsy jaw and horsy teeth as well.

"Yeah, actually," Nate said between gritted teeth, continuing to hold Teddy back.

"I meant _him_ ," the boy said, pointing at Carlisle. "I'd like a shot at Harrison myself," he added, glaring at Teddy, who finally stopped trying to leap at Carlisle's face.

"Why? What did I do to you?" Teddy demanded of the boy.

"You lot are going to have Professor Weasley for Defence and _we're_ not going to get her at _all_ , we're stuck with _Potter_ ," he snarled. The other Slytherins shivered or made faces in response to what he'd said. Carlisle laughed.

"You lot don't _want_ the Boy Who Lived but _you're_ stuck with him! That almost makes up for us not having him." Carlisle caught Teddy's eye and snarled, "I said _almost_. My brothers have been telling me about Potter for years! Thanks to you—"

He stopped speaking abruptly as Professor Snape appeared in the doorway of the Potions dungeon. "Is there a reason for all of you to be out here instead of in your seats?" he asked calmly, his dark eyes taking in the scene before him. "Carlisle?" he asked the tall sandy-haired boy. "Flint?" he said to the horsy-faced Slytherin boy.

"No, sir," Flint said quickly.

Carlisle didn't respond. After Snape swept into the room he muttered, " _Greasy git_."

"I'll tell him you said that if you don't leave me alone," Teddy said to Carlisle as they entered. Carlisle curled his lip with disdain.

"And I'll deny it, _Harry's Son_ ," he hissed as he sat down.

" _Don't call me that_ ," Teddy whispered vehemently, sitting in front of Carlisle.

" _I'll call you whatever I like,_ " Carlisle said smugly, and Teddy believed him. He had a sinking feeling that _everyone_ would call him whatever they liked, and that this would probably include something to do with his 'real' father. He could only vaguely remember having wanted, for years, to learn the identity of this person.

Now he wished he'd never heard the name _Harry Potter_.

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	24. Special Services

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Twenty-Four**

 **Special Services**

 **#/#/#**

Teddy and Nate's first Potions lesson went surprisingly well. Snape asked Carlisle a number of questions to which he did not know the answer, but Teddy and Nate did since Nate had convinced Teddy of the wisdom of poring over the Potions text while eating lunch. In retrospect, Teddy realized that this was probably why he had not heard the gossip about Professor Potter only teaching the Slytherins and Professor Weasley teaching the Gryffindors. However, he liked being able to raise his hand and answer when Professor Snape asked a question, especially when Carlisle had been unable to answer. Both he and Nate had received nods of approval, which Teddy quickly discovered was high praise indeed from Professor Snape.

Teddy's mood would have been improved by the double Potions lesson were it not for the fact that he could not do his homework in the common room before or after dinner without being assailed by Gryffindors who were cross about his having lost fifty house points, as though he'd done this single-handedly, or by first years who felt that the detention was his fault as well.

He finally ended up sitting at the foot of the stairs leading to the dungeons, scribbling an essay for Professor Weasley on a long piece of parchment, which is where Professor Snape discovered him when it was close to eight o'clock.

#/#/#

"Harrison! What are you doing here?"

"Homework," he said, looking up at the tall professor. Harrison explained the problem, and the reason for the Slytherins being cross with him as well.

Snape nodded. "I am afraid there are still many in my house whose parents sympathise with the Dark Lord. If you do not know of what I speak I suggest that you read _this_ chapter of your text," he said, picking up the boy's Defence book and turning to a page near the end.

"But you don't, yeah?" Harrison asked uncertainly.

"No, I do not. I fought against the Dark Lord."

Harrison gave him a grin. "Thought so. I knew you couldn't be like those others."

Snape was surprised but found it easier to look at the boy without thinking of Harry Potter. Doing so without thinking of _James_ Potter was more of a challenge than he had anticipated, though he had acquitted himself well during the lesson. Whenever he felt like snapping at Harrison, seeing, in his mind's eye, the boy's grandfather sitting in the same seat thirty-six years earlier, he took it out on Carlisle instead. _Carlisle can take it_ , he'd thought. And Harrison actually seemed to have done some revision before coming to the lesson. He knew far more than Snape would have thought, certainly more than his father had known during his first Potions lesson.

Snape looked at his watch. "You will be late to your detention if you do not leave." He told Harrison how to find the Trophy Room and the boy thanked him with another disarming grin. After he left, Snape needed to sit on the step himself, kneading his temples and wondering how he was to survive this term with a dead ringer for James Potter sitting before him who evidently thought that the Potions master was a hero and Harry Potter was a slimy git.

#/#/#

"Oof. My arm's falling off," Nate whinged, swinging his aching arm in a circle. The silver award he'd been polishing was still dark with tarnish at the edges.

"You'd think wizards could come up with a sort of silver that _doesn't_ tarnish," Donna sniffed, scrubbing furiously at a tall cup with double handles.

"They probably wouldn't use it here," Teddy said miserably. "This way they can give the job of polishing the stuff to students in detention. Couldn't _you_ have told Potter?"

Donna's eyes grew larger behind her thick lenses. "Are you mad? I certainly wasn't going to be the one to tell him that Carlisle called your mum a slag for shagging Potter when he was sixteen and she was thirty-two. I don't have a death wish, you know. And Carlisle wouldn't have known how old your mum was if he hadn't been eavesdropping on us at breakfast, the tosser."

Teddy grimaced. "Carlisle's name should be car _buncle_. He's a pustule, a boil, a—" Donna and Nate were grinning at him. "What?" he said suddenly.

"Nothing," Nate said, slapping Teddy on the shoulder and then groaning with pain, holding his arm with his other hand. "I won't be able to write tomorrow..."

"You should have been cleaning with your left hand, like me," Donna informed him smugly. "It's slower going, but my good arm won't ache tomorrow."

Nate frowned. "Didn't think of that."

"I used to do it all the time, when I had to write lines in detention. Takes longer, but usually there's a time limit on the detention anyway and no one's the wiser, even though the writing is nearly illegible and there isn't as much of it."

"I wish Potter had just made us write lines," Teddy said, grunting with effort as he scrubbed at the tarnished plaque he'd been trying to clean for the better part of an hour.

"I said the same thing to Fitzroy," Donna said, "but he said his older sister told him that Potter _never_ has students write lines in detention. It's against his personal philosophy or something."

"Right," Teddy groaned, continuing to scrub. "His personal philosophy means we have to clean our arms off our bodies, all so—" He really looked at the award he was cleaning now, a horrid queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Bloody hell," he mumbled, throwing it down on the stone flags and going to look for something else to clean.

"What?" Donna and Nate asked together. He didn't answer. The plaque had been given for 'Special Services to the School.' There were two names on it, but it was at the first half-polished name that they stared in horror:

 _Harry Potter_.

#/#/#

Harry stood in the doorway of the Trophy Room staring at the first year Gryffindors. Staring at his _son_. The boy had just thrown down the award that had been given to Harry and Ron for "Special Services" after they'd brought Ginny back from the Chamber of Secrets. Harry still remembered the enormous relief he'd felt upon learning that she wouldn't be expelled.

The look of disgust on the familiar face floored him and made his stomach writhe uncomfortably. _He hates me_ , Harry thought, not having felt so miserable, he was sure, since Sirius had died. Or perhaps Hagrid. Or—no. He'd never felt this miserable. His own son hated the very sight of his _name_.

Harry was glad that the boy couldn't see his face. The Invisibility Cloak swirled around his legs as he backed away from the open doorway, unable to take any more. He'd heard what the blonde girl said Carlisle had said and bristled on Harrison's—and Tilda's—behalf. He no longer wondered why it was that none of the first year Gryffindors had had the nerve to tell him what had started the fight. He thought, _Tilda was a good person. Is. She didn't want to sleep with me_. _And if it weren't for Voldemort she wouldn't have done._

He had no doubt that Tilda had not been acting of her own free will when their son was conceived and the idea galled him, for it meant that he was the agent for Tilda either being violated or having to sleep with him while under Imperius—which amounted to the same thing as far as he was concerned. Either way, he felt deeply ashamed and remorseful and wondered when Tilda had worked out that it wasn't really him looking back at her through _his_ eyes. He hoped that it was well afterward. He hated to think of her realising while they were still—

Harry leaned against the cold stone wall in the corridor, his eyes closed as he gulped painfully, swallowing the bile that had risen in his throat. He wondered briefly whether this was how Viktor Krum had felt when he'd been under Imperius and had put the Cruciatus curse on Cedric Diggory. _Krum had probably never been taught to resist Imperius,_ he thought. _I was supposed to be learning Occlumency. I was supposed to learn to stop Voldemort from using me to hurt others._

Harry's head jerked up when a shout emerged from the Trophy Room. He strode back to the doorway. Carlisle and Harrison faced each other with wands drawn, clear hatred in both of their expressions. _That didn't take long_ , he thought, unsurprised, having far too much experience of the Carlisle family. The rest of the children stood around the two boys. Harry still couldn't get over how _small_ first years looked to him now that he was nearly thirty. The others shouted encouragement or taunts, creating a great din in the echoing chamber.

"It's not my fault we have this detention, Carlisle! You're the one who was shooting your mouth off!" Harrison declared, giving Harry an idea. Under his Cloak, he pointed his wand at Carlisle, thinking, _Here's an advantage to being my son, Harrison. I may not have done anything for you in the last eleven years, but I can help you now._

Before the boy could frame a response to Harrison, his mouth had leapt from his face and was careering around the room, making a sound like a bullet as it ricocheted off the glass and stone surfaces around them, bouncing from one dark, tarnished plaque to another, from trophy case to trophy case.

The others stared in wonder at the airborne mouth, occasionally ducking or dodging it, except for the blonde girl with the thick glasses, who was laughing so hard that she was doubled over, clutching her stomach. The freckled boy with reddish-brown hair soon followed her example, until the only ones not laughing uncontrollably were Carlisle, whose mouth was bouncing off a large indignant-looking bust of a goblin mounted over the door, and Harrison himself.

Harry found it difficult not to laugh as well, but a moment later he did not feel like laughing. Footsteps approached the corridor, a regular clipped rhythm that he recognised easily after seventeen years. He quickly restored Carlisle's mouth and slipped farther down the corridor so that he might elude the newcomer by hiding in a niche. He also instinctively set up the mental barriers that would preclude his being detected in another manner, glad that he _had_ eventually mastered Occlumency.

Snape looked, if possible, more cross than usual as he swept into the corridor. Harry concentrated harder on his mental barriers, relieved when Snape turned and stood in the doorway to the Trophy Room, surveying the first year Gryffindors with a critical eye.

"It is my understanding that you are serving detention. Tell me, then, why I heard _laughter_ ringing through the corridors, evidently originating _here_?" he said icily, his black eyes sweeping from right to left. Harry was glad that he had restored Carlisle's mouth. He moved closer, so he could see past Snape into the Trophy Room.

"He made my mouth fly around the room," Carlisle whinged, wasting no time in grassing on Harrison, pointing his finger accusingly. Harrison's eyebrows flew up in surprise.

"I didn't!" he said immediately. "Or—at least—I don't think I did. I didn't _mean_ to."

"You said I'd shot off my mouth and then it _was_ shooting, all over the place!" Carlisle retorted, causing a number of students to start sniggering into their hands or otherwise attempting to stifle their laughter. When they caught Snape's eye, however, the soft tittering petered out.

Harry worried that he'd made matters worse by performing a spell for which Harrison was now going to be blamed. _I didn't mean for you to get into trouble,_ he thought. The boy with the reddish-brown hair stepped forward, his snub childish nose somehow looking familiar. He bit his lip nervously and said, "It was me, sir. I did it. Ted's my mate and I didn't like to see him bullied. If anyone's going to be punished, it should be me."

"Really?" Snape said, one eyebrow raised sceptically. He looked back and forth between the two boys for a moment before saying, "Both of you. In my office, now. I will deal with you in a few minutes. Go." Harrison and his friend did not wait for further instructions but immediately bolted down the corridor. Snape watched them go, after which he crossed his arms and glared at the other first year Gryffindors.

"I would take more points from Gryffindor for inappropriate conduct while in detention, but I hear that Professor Potter has already deducted quite a number of points from his _own house_ today, so count yourselves lucky that you are not losing even more. I will alert Mr Filch to the fact that you need closer supervision, as you are evidently incapable of executing a simple cleaning job without erupting into civil war. I should add, however, a small 'thank you,' as it will clearly be quite easy to eliminate Gryffindor as any sort of threat in the House Cup competition this year," he sneered, making Harry clench his hands under the Cloak. "Get to work. You don't want Mr Filch to find you idle when he arrives," he added threateningly.

Harry struggled to keep his emotions under control as Snape strode down the corridor away from him. _It will clearly be quite easy to eliminate Gryffindor as any sort of threat in the House Cup competition._ He hadn't changed a bit. Harry seethed, watching him, thinking of the previous year's Quidditch Final. _You think Gryffindor's no threat this year?_ he thought furiously. _We'll see about that._

He wondered what Snape was going to do to Harrison and the other boy but he didn't dare go to the dungeons to find out. He knew that he was too keyed up to maintain his mental barriers against intrusion for much longer. Snape would soon detect his presence. Frustrated all out of proportion to what had occurred, he strode down the corridor in the opposite direction, toward the tower where Ginny was tucking the girls into their beds.

 _I've never done that with Harrison,_ he thought suddenly. _No,_ he corrected himself, _his friend called him 'Ted.'_ Tilda was the only parent the boy had ever known. Even though he was remorseful over the way the boy had come to be—he still didn't know how he could face Tilda to talk about it, though he knew he eventually must—Harry also felt a sudden acute sense of _loss_ , of having lost _eleven years_ with the boy, with his son, a son he hadn't known existed. And now, when he tried to help him with a bully, it backfired.

Feeling terrifically incompetent as a father, and somewhat chagrined, as a teacher, that he'd put a spell on a student, he took off his glasses and the Invisibility Cloak, angrily wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Replacing his glasses on his nose and slinging the Cloak over his shoulder, he walked wearily up the curving stairs to their tower flat. The nearly-full moon sailed high above the oculus at the top of the staircase like a hopeful beacon.

#/#/#

Nate and Teddy quickly reached the marble stairs leading to the entrance hall, slowing down and catching their breaths.

" _You—shouldn't—have—done—that_ ," Teddy managed to say to Nate, still panting a little. He couldn't work out why Nate had taken it upon himself to claim responsibility for Carlisle's mouth ricocheting around the Trophy Room. He was uncertain about how to articulate a simple _thank you_ , having never had a friend near his age who wasn't related to him. He was good friends with his Uncle Jack, who was a bit like a large child able to move around the country at will, but the closest thing he'd ever had to a best mate was his cousin Jimmy, who was twelve.

Unfortunately, his Aunt Audrey and Aunt Nick didn't visit more than twice a year, so he didn't get to see Jimmy as often as he would have liked. And even though it suddenly _was_ like he finally had a best mate when Jimmy visited, his cousin talked incessantly about his friends at home, his real mates, which he _had_ , unlike Teddy. Most of Jimmy's friends also had parents who were not the usual husband-wife combination, which was how he'd met them, but when he and his friends got together the last thing they wanted to discuss was their parents. They talked about football or video games or films or music, like other kids.

Teddy envied Jimmy and his relatively normal life and had asked his cousin how he'd got away without being teased all the time. Jimmy had shrugged. "Dunno," he'd said; "I reckon my mums are just—careful."

 _Careful_. His mum had _tried_ to be careful. Though she knew her efforts often failed, she had no idea just _how_ spectacularly they had failed at times. Teddy had protected her from the worst of what he'd experienced.

Nate shrugged and his walk turned into something of a swagger. He smirked and said, "Don't worry about me. It's not your fault you performed accidental magic, after all. And Sev—erm, Professor Snape told me the same thing, though he also told me that I need to learn to control myself."

"Yeah, but you said you did it _on purpose_. You must _love_ detentions."

As they began descending the stairs to the dungeons, Nate's smirk grew more pronounced. "I doubt I'll be getting detention from Professor Snape."

Teddy bored his eyes into the back of Nate's head as they walked downstairs. He wasn't used to having a friend who was always around, but he didn't think he was supposed to take _I doubt I'll be getting detention from Professor Snape_ for an answer without trying to find out what was behind it. It seemed that Nate _wanted_ him to ask.

"All right, I give up. _Why_ won't you be getting detention from Snape?" Teddy finally asked, flexing his tired right arm and hoping he wasn't going to be assigned more cleaning.

Nate turned around when they reached the potions classroom and grinned at him. "Remember when I said I almost had a stepfather?"

Teddy shrugged. "Yeah, what about—?" Nate grinned even more broadly and Teddy stared at him with his mouth open. " _No_. You're kidding. Your mum and Snape? I thought you said you were living like Muggles and you didn't know you were a wizard. You didn't even know your own mum was a witch."

"All true. And I didn't know Severus—erm, Professor Snape—was a wizard until this summer, when I got my letter. I found out a _lot_ of things when my letter came." He paused. "I was hacked off at my mum for about a week after. Imagine being able to do magic and—and just _not_ , all these years?" He shook his head.

"She must really have loved your dad," Teddy said softly, thinking of his own mother and trying to imagine her— _her and Potter_ —no. He couldn't. He simply couldn't. And while part of it was that he didn't _want_ to, even once he'd got past that…

"I reckon. Not that it kept her from dating."

"So how did Professor Snape and your mum—?"

"They were just friends at first. She brought him home one night when she had one of her book club things and the sitter had called to say that she was sick. She said Severus—oh, bother, I can't remember not to call him that—was an old friend who'd come into her office that day. She asked him if he could stay with me for a little while so she could go to the book club and he said he could."

"How old were you?"

Nate looked thoughtful. "About four. I was in my Muppet stage. Don't know why; can't stand them now. I was spending a lot of time watching videos of _The Muppets Take Manhattan_ and the one where they go to London, and I remember Severus sitting on the couch with me, watching one of them with me while Mum was out, no expression on his face at all. And _then_ I saw it." The edge of his mouth turned up. "He was trying not to laugh, but it wasn't all the time. Just sometimes. And before Mum came home I finally worked it out: it was whenever Miss Piggy hit someone." He laughed loudly, then clapped his hand onto his mouth when the noise sounded quite loud in the stone corridor. Teddy also put his hand over his own mouth to quiet his laughter. He tried to picture the dour man who'd shown up at his house to take him shopping in Diagon Alley sitting with a four-year-old, watching the Muppets, but he could not.

"So how did he go from babysitting you to dating your mum?"

"No idea, but it was a while after that first time that I saw him again. I think. It's hard to remember now. Mum said he was babysitting me again because Abby—my usual babysitter—couldn't do it. Her mum was sick this time. I didn't really know the bloke who was taking her out—it was a date, not the book club. Cyril-something. And the next morning, when I heard a man's voice in the kitchen, I think I was too sleepy at first to realise that it was Severus. Then I walked into the room and saw _him_ sitting there instead of Cyril. Or whatever his name was. And I didn't even get right away that they were sort of dating until the next time Abby came to babysit me and _he_ was the one who picked up my mum. He wasn't so bad. One or two of the blokes she'd dated really hated kids but tried to pretend they didn't. He never looked _thrilled_ about spending time with me, but he didn't try to make me miserable, either. I swear one git was trying to _poison_ me."

"So why didn't he become your stepfather? Why did they break up?"

"My mum got pregnant."

Teddy dropped his jaw. "And he broke up with her? That's not very—"

"No, he asked her to marry him. But she said no. So that was it. After Julian was born Severus only came round to see _him_." Nate's mouth twisted. "I don't think I realised I missed him at first, and then I blurted out something stupid and selfish, because, well, I was only about six. He seemed to feel guilty about leaving me behind when he took Julian out for the day, probably because I said something about not having a dad, and ever since then he's taken me along, too. Which probably also works better for Mum, since that means she gets time to herself when we're both gone."

"Why'd she say 'no' when he asked her to marry him?"

Nate shrugged. "Dunno. He's nothing to look at, but that didn't stop her from dating him. He's a lot older than her. Maybe that had something to do with it."

 _Yeah, but was he twice her age, like my mum was when she and Potter—?_ Teddy stopped that train of thought before it could go any further and said, "In a way he _has_ become your stepdad. Without actually marrying your mum. And now you have a little brother, too. That must be nice."

Nate considered this. "Yeah, in a way. You're right, I reckon. I still wish she'd married him. He's not a bad bloke. She could do worse. After I got my Hogwarts letter I wondered if she didn't marry him because she was worried about having to tell me about being a wizard sooner than she'd planned. I mean, unless she was willing to live apart from her husband for ten months a year we probably would have come here to live and I _think_ I would have worked out that he was a wizard and my mum was a witch."

Teddy snorted. "You think?" Just as he said this they heard clipped, regular footsteps descending the stairs. Soon Professor Snape was striding down the corridor toward where they were leaning against the classroom door, waiting. He looked very stern.

"Both of you. This way." Teddy couldn't tell whether he was cross, or how cross he might be. His face was impassive, giving nothing away. They followed him along the corridor and into his office, looking uncertainly at each other. For a moment it occurred to Teddy to wonder whether Nate had made up the story about Snape and his mum. After all, he didn't know Nate very well and he'd met a number of kids at his village school who'd told elaborate lies to him and then laughed when Teddy believed them. He had often wished that he wasn't so trusting and had started to be a little more sceptical during the previous year, but there were times when this had backfired and he'd disbelieved the truth, making it even less likely that the other kids would take to him.

Teddy sighed deeply as he followed Nate, wishing he were better at making friends and hoping that he wouldn't regret believing Nate, even though he wasn't certain that he did. He wouldn't question Nate's honesty but he wouldn't treat the story as fact until he had other evidence. As far as he could tell Snape was not behaving as though he knew Nate and was in the habit of taking him and his little brother (if _he_ existed) on holiday.

Professor Snape sat behind the large desk, bell jars on the shelves behind him reflecting the candlelight and firelight that had sprung to life when they'd entered the room, giving the subterranean space an eerie green underwater glow. He put his fingertips together and raised one eyebrow, the edge of his mouth turned up as he inspected them. "I think that for your misbehaviour during detention an appropriate punishment will be _another_ detention tomorrow afternoon, with me, in the potions dungeon. If you enjoyed cleaning trophies using Muggle methods you should _revel_ in _this_ ," he added.

Snape seemed to be truly enjoying this and Teddy turned to Nate, blurting, "You said he wouldn't give you detention!" He decided that he didn't believe Nate's story and wasn't even certain he wanted to be his friend anymore. _Oh, well. That was quick._

Snape looked at Nate very pointedly, however, and said in a soft voice, "What, _exactly_ , have you been telling Harrison?"

#/#/#

Ginny sank down into the bath so that her chin just brushed the surface of the water. She closed her eyes and tried to stop it, she tried with all her might, but it was too _hard._ Soon the tears were coming of their own accord again, even as she thought, _Oh, bugger. Now I'll have to do a spell to deal with the blotchiness so Harry won't know._

Since she'd already decided to deal with it after the fact she gave up on stopping the flow of tears and simply allowed it to happen. The salt water dripped from her chin and combined with the soapy bath water, which was cooling. She didn't feel like reaching for her wand, however, in order to maintain the warmth, so she simply sat in the chilly water, shivering. In an attempt to be a little warmer she wrapped her arms around her legs and put her head on her knees, allowing herself, for once, to cry in earnest.

Unfortunately, her mood was making her magic go a little haywire. A chill wind swept across the floor of the bathroom and made the towels flutter on the rack. She held her legs more tightly, trying to get her emotions under control.

"Ginny?"

She jerked her head up, then closed her eyes and held her breath, plunging her face into the water for a moment before bringing it up again, wiping the water from her eyes. Her face was dripping wet and it was harder to tell that she'd been crying. She hoped.

"What, Harry?" she said as brightly as she could. He had said her name from the corridor and she felt like her heart was thumping quite painfully in her chest.

"Are you all right? Can I come in?" She looked around quickly. There was no longer a breeze moving the towels about. She'd managed to calm herself enough.

"Of course you can," she said quickly, running her hand down her face as he opened the door. He entered slowly, as though deep in thought, and perched on the edge of the clawfoot tub, staring into space. She decided that she needn't have worried about his noticing her tears. He didn't look at her.

"Can I ask you something, Ginny?" he said softly, reaching behind him to brush his hand idly through the cooling water. He shivered and pulled his hand back, turning to look at her at last. "Aren't you cold? Want me to warm it up for you?"

She shook her head, turning away from him as she stood, reaching for a towel. "I should get out anyway. I need to adjust my lesson plans if I'm going to be teaching the first year Gryffindors on my own and you're taking Slytherin."

"That wasn't what I wanted to ask you," he said needlessly as she wrapped the towel around her shivering body, her damp hair feeling like it was laced with ice where it clung heavily to her upper back.

She breathed in deeply through her nose, thinking, _No, I didn't think so._ Grasping his shoulder to steady herself, she stepped out of the tub and onto the towel she'd lain on the cold stone floor earlier. She tried to ignored the hard shards of ice that had frozen themselves into the fabric when she'd inadvertently sent the cold wind howling across the floor. "What did you want to ask me?" she said simply, her feet feeling like icicles themselves.

"Never mind that now. We can get to it. You look upset. What about?"

"It's stupid, Harry," she said, turning away from him. "I just want to—"

"Ginny, look at me," he said quietly, gently putting his hand on her damp shoulder, turning her to face him. She hoped he wouldn't notice the red-rimmed eyes and dark pink nose that she'd seen in the mirror hanging over the sink, but when she saw his expression she knew that she hadn't fooled him.

"Why have you been crying, Ginny?" he whispered, taking out his wand and drawing it gently over her hair, drying it, stroking it slowly as he worked and combing his fingers through it, making her shiver from the feel of his touch on her scalp.

"I said that it's stupid," she repeated, wishing that she didn't feel the way she did, that she wasn't such a small, petty person. She couldn't look at him.

"Ginny," he said slowly, "you don't like to cry around me. You never have. Why?" he asked, sinking his fingers into her now-dry hair. Somehow his question made her want to start crying again. She had to open her eyes very wide to avoid it and almost succeeded.

"I'm sorry, Harry," she said, turning away from him again, tugging her hair away from his hand. "I know—I know you don't like people crying around you, so I try never to—"

"What?" he said, his voice going up. "Where'd you get that idea?"

"Well," she whispered, wiping her cheeks with her back to him. "You know. You told me how Cho got on your nerves, crying all over the place. You called her a hosepipe."

"And you thought that meant that you couldn't cry around me? That was _Cho_ , Ginny. She didn't need to be crying to get on my nerves, when all was said and done. And look at why she was crying: she wasn't over her old boyfriend, Cedric. Yes, _that's_ why I wanted to go out with her, so I could spend all of my time talking about the bloke she _really_ wanted to be alive, the bloke whose death was my fault. 'Cheers, Harry. How'd you like to come to Hogsmeade on Valentine's Day for a guilt-fest?'"

"Oh," Ginny said softly. "That makes sense," she conceded. "Why didn't you tell me?"

He shrugged. "I reckon that after we broke up I didn't want to dwell on it. Felt I was well shot of her, though. Couldn't even work out why I fancied her in the first place."

"You didn't notice any other girls when she was around because she was so pretty," Ginny said promptly. Harry put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.

"I was thirteen when I first noticed her. I didn't even _know_ her. I noticed you even before you were my girlfriend. I didn't think about _why_ I was noticing, but I did." He smiled and brushed her hair from her brow. "With that hair you're a bit hard to miss."

Ginny wanted to smile back at him but couldn't. "And then there was the summer after Sirius died, and Tilda," she said softly. "I think Tilda rather made other girls fall out of your brain, and now we know why." She looked up at Harry, who had opened his mouth as though to speak but closed it again with a snap, turning red. "All right, Harry. You want to know why I was crying? Because I'm stupid, that's why. Because I sat there this morning, after you left, and watched _him_ , your son, and I felt such hatred and jealousy of his mother—" Her voice caught and she couldn't speak for a moment. "And it wasn't because she had slept with you," she was finally able to go on. "I mean—yes, a part of me does want to dwell on that at times. But you don't remember it and if you were possessed by Tom then it could have been quite horrible for her. I don't envy her that at all. But _him_ …" She put her hand to her brow, closing her eyes. "All I could think was that he could have been _my_ son, _our_ son, yours and mine, but he wasn't. He's _hers_. And it's all my own fault."

Harry eyed her curiously. "What are you talking about, Ginny?"

"I don't mean that I wanted to have a baby when I was in school. Don't be ridiculous. I meant—we could have had more kids if I hadn't been so—well, it was my first time, and all I could think was that I never wanted to experience that again and once I'd said that, I didn't think—"

"—you didn't think you could take it back," Harry finished for her, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her to him. "Oh, Ginny, why didn't you say something before? We're still quite young, the girls would adore having a little brother or sister—"

"And that's another reason that I'm a fool and a hypocrite and a—well, if you can think of more terrible names to call me you can jump in any time."

"Ginny! What are you on about?"

"A _son_. I was specifically talking about the fact that I was supposed to be teaching and all I could think about was that I wanted a _son_. Your son. Even after everything I went through when I was growing up, all of the times my mother was a great and terrible stick-in-the-mud who thought the _boys_ should never be asked to do _anything_ around the house—although the garden was all right, they _could_ be bothered to throw gnomes over the hedge—and moving furniture was all right, that wasn't _girlish_. Do you know why I had to sneak into the broom shed when no one else was looking? Mum didn't think it ladylike to ride. She drove me mad favouring the boys when I was growing up and I hated it. And now you'd think I didn't have two beautiful daughters, you'd think I had no kids at all, like Hermione. All I could think of was a _son_." She sighed. "Not that it was the first time. Whenever Ron and Luna have another boy I find myself thinking it again and hating myself more each time."

"Ah," he said, sitting on the edge of the tub and drawing her to him. He pulled her onto his lap and held her against his chest, his arms around her waist, her cheek on his shoulder.

"That's all you have to say?" she whispered, allowing him to manipulate her. She felt very small in his arms.

"Not entirely," he said throatily. Looking down at her he said slowly, "Ginny, you could have said that you'd changed your mind about having more kids at any time. I thought it was what you wanted. I never pushed because—well, it just didn't seem like my place. I saw what you went through to give birth to Rory and I wish I'd been there for Ruby as well. I was actually pretty relieved when you said you didn't want more kids, since it meant you wouldn't need to go through that again."

She ducked her head under his chin. "But it's stupid to want to have more kids just because _she's_ given you a son."

"Well, maybe. A little," he agreed, grinning at her and putting his hand under her chin. "But you've thought it before, so that's okay," he assured her with a loving smile. "And if you like—we could get started on a larger family tonight," he said softly, leaning down to kiss her on the tip of her nose.

She was suddenly very aware of being wrapped in the towel only. She looked up at her husband, still uncertain about how this man had become her partner in life, wondering where the little boy had gone who couldn't get onto Platform Nine and Three Quarters.

Ginny felt like her tears had fallen hours and not minutes earlier. Harry's gentle touch and suggestive words sent everything else out of her mind. She stood, lacing his fingers through hers as she led him to their bedroom. Grinning at him, she said, "You do have good ideas sometimes, Potter," as she dropped the towel and walked to the bed.

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	25. The Money Launderer

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Twenty-Five**

 **The Money Launderer**

 **#/#/#**

Long after he had sent Nate and Harrison back to Gryffindor Tower, Severus Snape remained in his office, sitting at his desk, staring into the fire and thinking. There was nothing to be done for it. He didn't dare modify Harrison's memory so he wouldn't remember what he'd heard. That was useless. Nate would only tell him again, very likely. Severus's experience with the boy had taught him that threats would have no effect on Nate's loose lips. Harrison knew everything, it seemed, about his new friend's family life, including the fact that _he_ was a regular part of it and had almost been Nate's stepfather.

 _Almost_.

If she had accepted his proposal, which she had not.

Not that he blamed her. There had not been a great deal of romance in their relationship. He would not have called it "convenient," either, as it was anything but for him. A part of him knew that she was taking him for granted, somewhat, but he didn't care. It had been so long since anyone had sought him out for any reason that he simply took what company she wanted to offer him and did not question the rest of it.

He still thought frequently of the first time he had walked into her office. Dumbledore had told him her name, but until he saw her he had not remembered who she was. He was not yet the Deputy Headmaster, so he was not in the habit of visiting the new Muggle-born students during the summer. However, Dumbledore had told him that Minerva was quite concerned about a new girl whose wizard father had neither acknowledged her existence nor paid anything toward her support. After Minerva and the Ministry had "convinced" him of the justice of paying for his daughter's school supplies there was the issue of the additional support he had finally "decided" to pay the mother. It was a great deal of money, to make up for the years of neglect. Severus reluctantly admired Minerva's remarkable knack for inducing guilt.

The large sum of money had to be converted to pounds sterling and paid to the mother in some way that wouldn't cause the Muggle government to think she'd stolen it. In the past the usual way was to invent a long-lost relative who'd left the money in a will, but the mother had grown up in foster care, had never been adopted, and no one knew anything about her family, so it was agreed that that would cause more problems than it would solve. Future payments would also need to be explained in some fashion. Minerva was the one who'd come up with the idea of using a Muggle charity. She knew, in fact, of a witch who was living as a Muggle and working for the perfect organisation, a charity that provided grants to single mothers with incomes below a certain level. Anonymous donations could always be made to private charities with no problem, so all they had to do was see to it that the charity funnelled the money to the mother in question, who would then have a legitimate source to cite for the income.

Minerva was far too busy visiting other Muggle-born students to see the witch who worked at the charity so Dumbledore asked Severus to do this one favour for him and Severus could think of no plausible excuse for avoiding it, which was how he found himself striding through the streets of Fulham in Muggle clothes on his way to the Queen Alexandra Women's Aid Society.

He asked for her at the receptionist's desk and was given directions to her office. When he reached it, she was sitting in a rather lumpy-looking old fashioned desk chair, poking at a computer keyboard as though she was afraid it would explode if she did something wrong, her face screwed up in a grimace as she swore under her breath. She had the same long, dark curling hair he remembered, though he'd been accustomed to seeing her in Hogwarts robes, not in the Muggle clothes she wore now. Severus had not seen her, he realised, since she had left school at the end of her seventh year. He idly wondered why she was working _here_ , instead of in the wizarding world, but he remembered that she was a Muggle-born and decided that he would never really understand the appeal the Muggle world had for them once they'd had a taste of the magical life. During the Dark Lord's second reign of terror more than a few Muggle-born witches and wizards had abandoned the wizarding world, many not bothering to return after the danger was past. She seemed to be one of these, as it had been three years since the war had ended and she was clearly firmly ensconced in her job.

"Miss—Miss Clearwater? I believe you can help me with a most delicate matter," he said in a low voice, lest her co-workers overhear them. The "offices" were in an old terraced London townhouse whose rooms were divided into work spaces by rude-looking low panels that defined small cubicles. Hers was in what had been the drawing room; the elaborate plasterwork on the high ceiling, coated with too many layers of aqua paint, was a strange counterpoint to the melamine desks and flickering computer screens.

She looked up and dropped her jaw. "P-professor _Snape_? What are you doing here?" She could not have looked more surprised if he had come to see her with a dragon in tow. He was very business-like and straightforward, all the while wanting to shake her for giving up the world in which she _should_ have been living. But he had to put aside his feelings about her job and way of life and focus on their common ground. Lecturing her would be counterproductive and could cause her to refuse to do what he was asking. Dumbledore had given him a very simple task. It was time to get to it.

"As I said, I need your help."

And she had given her help, eagerly, impressed that he wanted to assist the woman in question, as though it had been his idea and not Minerva's. He found himself reluctant to correct this view. She was treating him strangely. It took him only a little while to determine what was different—they were _equals_ now, both adults. He remembered that she had been somewhat reserved as a girl. She was a good Ravenclaw who had executed her work conscientiously, but she never stood out in any way in his mind until she and Hermione Granger had been Petrified. When he had arrived in the hospital wing bearing the Mandrake draught for reviving the Petrifaction victims, he had found Percy Weasley there already, sitting by her bedside, holding her stony hand, telling her it would be all right.

When he was rising to leave her cubicle, having done what he'd come for, her telephone rang. She nodded at him and waved a cheerful goodbye as she picked it up, saying, "Penelope Clearwater." As he walked down the makeshift corridor past other cubicles, he heard her say clearly, "Oh, _no_ , Abby. No no no. You _cannot_ do this to me. I'm the one who chose the book! I'm supposed to lead the discussion."

He paused for only a moment, wondering what on earth she was talking about, but a moment later he shook himself and continued moving toward the exit. When he heard footsteps behind him, it never occurred to him that she had followed him and she had to call his name before he turned around.

"Professor Snape! Erm, Severus!" she said both urgently and uncertainly. She strode toward him, red-faced and obviously nervous. When she reached him she bit her lip, then looked like she had decided to take a chance. "What are you doing tonight?"

 _That_ he was not expecting. "I am, er, nothing in particular."

"You see, I'm in this book club and I chose the book we're discussing tonight and my sitter just called and said she's sick in bed and can't come and there's no one else I can ask because everyone else I know is either coming to the book club or has kids themselves and I've tried sending Nate to someone else's house for the evening, but—" She paused in the middle of this rapid-fire verbal assault to look around nervously and put her face very close to his, whispering, " _That's when he tends to do accidental magic. He gets upset, you see, when he has to go to a strange place_." She straightened up again and cleared her throat. "You're my only hope," she added with a catch in her voice that he knew was meant to be quite affecting.

It _was_. He was utterly affected by her, which both surprised and appalled him. _She was a student only seven years ago. She is sixteen years my junior_.

"Of course. I—I did not know that you had a son."

After that night he did not hear from her for weeks, other than a thank-you note for the night he had watched her son. Then suddenly, on a Friday afternoon, he received an owl from her, asking him to come to her flat that evening. He left a note for Dumbledore to inform him of his plans and left the castle immediately after his last lesson, walking to Hogsmeade before Apparating to London, arriving in an alleyway outside her building, hidden behind a large rubbish tip.

She answered her door promptly and he almost fell over in shock. When he'd seen her at work she was dressed in a nondescript skirt and blouse, along with some odd purple Wellies that she'd also worn to attend her book club meeting. This evening her hair was piled on top of her head instead of hanging loose and she wore a dark blue dress of some sort of slightly shiny material that clung rather closely to her body. Below the hem of her dress he could very clearly see her legs without the interference of the purple Wellies.

"Good evening," he said stiffly, trying to keep his tone of voice even. He did not wish to reveal how affected he was by her appearance. She smiled in greeting and stepped back to admit him. To his surprise another voice—a male voice—spoke from the lounge at the end of the corridor.

"Who's there, Penny?"

"The babysitter," she called back.

Severus felt a jolt in his stomach. _The babysitter._ He thought back again to the tone of her note and realised that he should have caught on to the reason for her asking him to come to London, though it lent itself to another interpretation as well.

Before they entered the lounge, she put her head very close to his. There was a mischievous light in her eye as she whispered, "Do you think I should tell him that I also do money-laundering for you?" She gave him a wicked conspiratorial smile and he stared at her, bewildered and more than a little disconcerted by her perfume.

"What? Oh." It took him a moment to understand. Before he knew what was happening she was walking ahead of him into the light of the lounge, where her date was waiting, waiting for the babysitter to arrive so they could go out.

Though that evening had turned out differently than he expected based on that beginning, he felt sometimes that her announcing that he was the babysitter was prescient in some way. Now he only saw her to take Julian and his brother to the zoo, or to a puppet show, or whatever Severus had chosen to occupy the boys on a given day. He truly felt as though he _was_ the babysitter again, and would be forevermore.

He stood and swore, flicking his wand at the fire to extinguish it before leaving the office for his solitary rooms.

#/#/#

"I saw him in detention. I went downstairs to spy on him. Pathetic, yeah?"

" _Oh, Harry_ ," Ginny said helplessly, pressing her hand to Harry's bare chest as they lay in bed after their first attempt to enlarge their family.

" _Seeing_ him is so amazing. I just stood there at first, watching him. _My son_ was all I could think. He's _my son_. It was so—weird. Sort of like looking in a mirror but not. I mean, I know I don't look like that anymore. Not completely, anyway. But it's still how I see myself, I reckon. Like a kid. It was a bit like the time I saw my dad in the Pensieve. He's like me—but a little off. Actually, he looks more like my dad than me."

"Still, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree," she mused, tracing circles on his chest.

"I'll say it doesn't. You know what caused that row this morning?"

"What?"

"Carlisle insulted his mum. Tilda." Harry told her what he'd overheard, making Ginny sit up straight.

"He—he said _that_?" She shook her head. "Would you have used language like that when you were his age?" she asked, aghast.

Harry also shook his head. "Well, no, not me. But I heard Dudley and his gang say worse things, to kids at our school. Come to that, the Carlisle boys remind me of Dudley and Piers and the rest of their gang."

"Speaking of whom, you'll have to tell your relatives that you have a son," she said. To her surprise, Harry laughed out loud.

"Are you _joking_? I can't do that. If Aunt Petunia knew that I'd become a father before my seventeenth birthday and that Tilda was the mother she'd have it all over Surrey in five minutes flat. And she'd make what Carlisle said sound like a _compliment_. No, Ginny. I know we sent them an announcement when the girls were born but there is no way I'm telling them about _this_. Thank Merlin the last time I had to see them was at our wedding, and you remember how well _that_ went."

Ginny did indeed remember. She hadn't known that her mother had taken it upon herself to invite the Dursleys. They had evidently shown up thinking that St Clare's Chapel was merely the church in which the ceremony was being held, but soon discovered, upon entering, that it had been turned into a _home_.

"Who the hell lives in a _church_?" she'd heard Vernon Dursley say from her vantage point at the top of one of the staircases in the drawing room. Vernon didn't see her, not being in the habit of looking up at people, only down.

"Whoever it is," Petunia Dursley opined, running her hand over some of the furniture, "they don't lack for money."

At the reception, Harry had obligingly introduced her to them, his jaw clenched. Neither Harry nor Ginny revealed that they hadn't intended to invite them. When his aunt asked him whose house they were using for the ceremony, he looked her squarely in the eye and said, "This is my place. I bought it last year when I finished school. Like it?"

Ginny could tell that Harry was enjoying watching the expression of surprise blossom on his aunt's face as she looked around. "Your place! And how did you afford something like—"

" _Don't_ , Petunia," her husband warned her. " _I don't want to hear about whatever he does for a living._ "

"I bought the house before I had a job, actually. For that matter, I still don't have a job. I've been training to be an Auror." Ginny smiled feebly at him, thinking of the news she had to give Harry later that evening, about being _late_. This certainly didn't seem to be the time.

"No job! Then what did you do, use your unnatural _skills_ to steal the money?" his aunt accused, her mouth twisting in distaste.

Ginny had to try very, very hard not to pull out her wand and hex her on Harry's behalf. She thought _these_ Dursleys were quite awful enough and was glad that they hadn't also brought Vernon's sister Marge, who, in addition to always setting off Harry's anger, was not to know about the wizarding world. Ginny thought it rather amazing that her wedding album wasn't full of photos of her throttling or hexing Dursleys—though the one candid shot that the photographer _did_ get of all five of them together showed Harry and Ginny making faces at his three relatives and trying to creep away.

"Well, you see, Aunt Petunia, it turns out that my parents left me rather a lot of money. Wizarding gold. Buying this house didn't make much of a dent in it, either." Harry looked very smug and Ginny had to try hard not to laugh.

"Gold!" Vernon bellowed suddenly. "What do you mean _gold_?"

"I mean as in gold Galleons. A Galleon is worth about five pounds."

Vernon glared at him through very narrow, angry eyes. "And just how many of these—these _Galleons_ did your parents leave you?"

Harry smirked, making Ginny think he was gloating just a little too much. "Not sure. Whenever I take money out of my vault it never really seems to—what word am I looking for?" he asked Ginny, who raised her eyebrows.

"Diminish?" she suggested.

"Yes. It never seems to diminish," he said, smiling broadly at his uncle. "And I've not bothered counting it, so I couldn't really tell you," he added. His smile seemed rather fixed on his face, quite stiff, and Ginny wondered how long he'd wanted to say these words to his uncle and watch his face go from beet red to deep purple. She was torn between enjoying his performance and feeling somehow that what he was doing was wrong. But then, the way they'd treated Harry since his parents were killed was wrong as well, so she reckoned he had a right to get some small revenge that didn't include actually casting spells. She thought he looked quite tempted, and she'd felt the temptation to start throwing hexes around herself, so she quite sympathised with his plight.

"All right," she said to him as they lay in bed, "we won't tell your Muggle relatives. But we really should tell Ron and Hermione and everyone else. And I think you should come back to teach the first year Gryffindors with me, so you can get to know him. You shouldn't have asked Minerva to let you drop that."

"I didn't!" he said defensively, sitting up. "It was _her_ idea. She felt I was being a 'disruptive influence'," he grumbled, followed by a sigh. "I did find out his birthday, though. The first of May, nineteen ninety-seven. Almost exactly—"

"Right," Ginny said quickly. "Almost exactly."

"And I don't know how I can teach him! Or even talk to him about being his dad." He bit his lip. "He hates me, Ginny. He really hates me. Not sure I blame him."

"Nonsense, Harry. Just tell Minerva you'll behave yourself," she said, her eyes merry, prompting him to hit her playfully with a pillow, "and come back to teach with me."

"You'll see," he said ominously. "And even once I start talking to him—I have to explain to him how he exists. Somehow."

"And then there are the girls," she said, leaning back against her pillow.

"Which girls? Oh, the twins!" he said, hitting his brow with the heel of his hand. "Sorry." He groaned. "I don't have any idea how to tell _them_ , either. Bloody hell."

"We have to tell them sometime, Harry. They might notice if a boy who looks like you comes home with us for the holidays."

He groaned again. "Tilda."

"What about her?"

"Don't you think that if we took him home for the holidays she'd want to have a say in that? Or tell us that we _couldn't_ take him for the holidays? He might not want to come anyway, since he probably misses his mum and currently hates the very sight of my _name_. And even if he decides he doesn't hate me after all, how do I face her, after—after what _he_ did to her through me—"

Ginny sighed and linked her arm in his, putting her head on his shoulder. "I have no idea, Harry. But I think it's like talking to your son or talking to our daughters: you just need to do it _quickly_ , before you lose your nerve."

He nodded, closing his eyes. "I reckon you're right, but I'd rather face another Hungarian Horntail than an eleven-year-old boy, his mother, or a pair of eight-year-old girls. And I doubt that I'm going to feel differently in the morning."

#/#/#

In the morning, however, Harry awoke with a feeling of great anticipation and optimism. _I can do this. He's just a boy. Surely he's wanted to know about me, about his dad?_

He woke the girls while Ginny was still in bed, acutely aware of his fatherly duties this morning, laughing with good humour when they both tried to snuggle down into their beds for "just five more minutes." With a wave of his hand the blankets flew into the air and he was met with a chorus of, "Oh, _Dad_ , come on…"

He soon had them fed and dressed, and they were going down the winding stairs to the door that led directly onto the grounds, where Molly Weasley and the Thestral-drawn carriage were waiting. Molly looked surprised that she did not have to go up to their tower flat today but did not question Harry about it, clearly noticing his high spirits.

"Did you always think it was cool how the carriage goes without anything drawing it?" Rory said to Harry as she climbed in. Harry met Molly's eye for a moment.

"Of course, that's what I thought the first time I saw one," Harry said truthfully. Or he might have thought it strange, he couldn't properly remember. The first time he remembered taking notice of the carriages was when he was finally aware of their _not_ moving under their own power, magical or otherwise. He hoped that his daughters would _never_ develop the ability to see Thestrals.

"Yeah, it's sooo cool that it can do what a _car_ can," Ruby sneered, climbing in after Rory.

"Ruby," Harry said, trying to make it sound like a warning but being too cheerful this morning to succeed. "Be nice to your sister."

"But _Dad_ , why can't we get a car? Why haven't we?"

"It wouldn't make sense. We don't need one here at Hogwarts. When we're at home during the summer the weather is nearly always fine and we can ride our bikes into the village. When we go on holiday we sometimes rent a car, so it's not as though we never have one. We just don't _own_ one. Someday we might. But now there's no need."

"What about the weekends? We could use a car on the weekends."

"Leave your dad alone, Ruby," Molly said, sounding impatient. "After I drop you off I still need to do my shopping."

"What's this sudden interest in a car?" Harry shook his head. "You'll be late for school if you don't leave now and you'll make your grandmother late for her shopping. Have a good day, the pair of you," he said, leaning forward to kiss them. He waved after backing away from the carriage. Even after all these years, Thestrals still gave him a bad feeling. "Thanks, Molly. Enjoy your shopping. See you this afternoon."

The carriage moved off around the tower and Harry breathed in the smell of the autumn morning, enjoying the feel of the warm sun on his face. Rather than going back into the tower he decided to have a walk around the castle, and when he reached the front door he entered the massive entrance hall just as the first students were coming down the marble stairs. He smiled and nodded at them, noting that some were still whispering behind their hands when they saw him, but he decided to ignore this. He was not going to let it bother him. He had a son. It wasn't as though he'd _killed_ anybody.

Mad-Eye Moody drifted through a wall just ahead of him and wafted into the Great Hall. Harry bit his lip and tried to change his train of thought.

 _I have a son, but I've done nothing to be ashamed of._

" _Hahaha!_ " Peeves cried the moment he saw Harry in the entrance hall. "Been a busy boy, eh, Potty-wee-Potty?" Peeves cackled with glee and threw up his arms. Suddenly everyone in the entrance hall was showered by newspapers. All was chaos for several minutes as students and teachers had to remove the papers from their heads so that they could see where they were walking. One fell down right into Harry's hands and he saw immediately that it was the morning's _Daily Prophet_.

As he read the large front-page headline he had one thought only:

 _Bloody hell_.

#/#/#

"Erm, sit down, please, Harrison."

Teddy hesitated in the doorway of the Defence against the Dark Arts office. A glass case in the corner held an elaborate antique sword. Moving photographs on the walls showed students waving and smiling at the camera, something Teddy was still getting used to. A number of the photos were of kids on broomsticks, throwing and catching dented red balls.

Potter stood in front of his desk, his hair on end and his robes open, revealing a shirt and trousers that seemed to have been slept-in and a tie with the Hogwarts crest that was loosened as though he were an overgrown student. Teddy grimaced and went to the chair before the desk. When the day came that he learned his father's identity he had assumed that he'd be an _adult_. Instead he'd got The Boy Who Lived, who still seemed to _be_ a boy.

After he and Nate had left the dungeons the night before—arriving in the dormitory long before the other boys, still in detention—Nate had told Teddy what he'd read about Harry Potter since getting his Hogwarts letter. His mother had shown him her old schoolbooks and he'd spent the remainder of the summer reading voraciously. Teddy had been unable to believe that the irate professor who'd arbitrarily given them detention that morning was some kind of wonder-wizard. Now here he was, hero of the magical world, yet he didn't seem to know how to dress himself. (His shirt buttons were skewed.) Teddy managed to raise his eyes as high as Potter's chin, where he saw two red spots. _This wally disposed of the Dark Lord_? he thought, frowning.

 _The 'Dark Lord' must have been a right plonker._

#/#/#

"I asked Professor Flitwick to excuse you from your Charms lesson this morning so we could talk," Harry began, trying to keep his voice from shaking. He picked up the _Daily Prophet_ that Peeves had hurled at him in the entrance hall. He'd done his best to vanish all of the other copies—some while people were reading them—but he didn't know whether Peeves had distributed them elsewhere or how many students were in the habit of receiving the paper by owl post, as Hermione had done when she was in school. Handing the newspaper to Harrison, he said, "This is the morning paper. I don't know who told Rita about—"

The boy glanced at the reporter's name. "Rita? You know her?"

Harry hesitated. "In a manner of speaking, yes. At any rate, I'll be contacting the newspaper to demand an immediate retraction—"

"—about you being my dad? That's why you asked me to come, isn't it? I'm not stupid. Looks like I can thank my mum for that. I must have got the not-being-stupid thing from _her_."

Harry winced. "Actually, no," he said, doing his best to ignore the insult, and the boy's insolence. "I mean—yes. I mean, I wasn't going to tell you—what you already knew. I reckoned that had already—I mean, that you'd already—" Harry sighed, exasperated. He ran his hand through his hair and pulled himself up to sit on the desk. "Listen. What I meant to say was—I'll ask them to retract the things Rita wrote about your mum."

#/#/#

Teddy really read the article now, feeling angrier and angrier with each word. He threw it onto the floor when he was done and swore bitterly, almost hoping that Potter would give him detention for his language, but Potter didn't say anything and Teddy felt the anger drain out of him again. He raised his eyes to Potter's and said, "I see what you mean. I mean—thanks." The word felt foreign in his mouth. "For getting them to—to take back this stuff about Mum."

Potter stood and started pacing. "I said I was going to ask them to do it. I can't make promises. The nerve! Rita hasn't changed. There was no call for her to—to make _assumptions_ , based just on my age and your mother's age. She doesn't _know_. Although," he added, stopping to look out of the window facing the grounds, "for that matter, neither do I."

"What don't you know?" Teddy asked, frowning.

 _If I have to tell my own dad about where babies come from I'll have to be shot right afterward._

#/#/#

"The morning paper, Master, sir." The house-elf spoke with a practised obsequiousness that somehow did not ring as true as it had before the Ministry had liberated elves from the jinxes and conditioning that had previously caused them to be utterly obedient to their masters and to punish themselves severely if, by some miracle, they temporarily overcame the effect of the jinxes and disobeyed in any way.

"Thank you," Blaise Zabini said grudgingly. He'd learned the hard way that to omit such banal niceties from his exchanges with the elf was a guarantee that he'd find salt in the sugar bowl, if not worse. He tried not to think about how much he missed the old days as he spread the paper on the table beside his toast and coffee. The front-page headline immediately caught his attention.

"Well, now," he whispered. "Isn't _this_ interesting…"

#/#/#

 **Please be a responsible reader and review.**

#/#/#

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	26. The Suspended Sword

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Twenty-Six**

 **The Suspended Sword**

 **#/#/#**

Teddy really hoped that the man who was very likely his father wasn't completely clueless, at his age, about how babies were made. But he was starting to suspect that that wasn't the problem the longer Potter stared out the window of his office, looking like a lost child.

"I don't know what _happened_ ," he told Teddy at last. "When my wi—I mean, Professor Weasley told me that my kid was one of the new first years, it sounded ridiculous to me. As far as I know, I never did anything with your mother that could—I mean, for her to have had my kid we would have had to—" Potter turned red and glanced at Teddy, then away again.

" _You don't remember_?" Teddy gasped, staring at Potter, who turned an even deeper red and seemed dedicated to staring out of the window for the rest of his life.

"It was _him_ ," Potter finally whispered, slowly returning to his usual colour. It looked like it was an effort for Potter to turn and face Teddy. "Do you know who Voldemort was?"

Teddy nodded. "Nate told me. I mean, he only said the name once. Whispered it. Mostly he said You-Know-Who and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Which I think is stupid, as he's gone, but Nate said it's like swearing in polite company or something. It's just not done."

Potter shook his head. "I know people felt that way once, but I'd hoped that in the last ten years they might have come to their senses. Say the name. Don't give it power it doesn't have by avoiding it," he said adamantly. Teddy swallowed. After what Nate had said the name made him a little nervous.

"Well, anyway—I know who you mean. Are you telling me—what _are_ you telling me?"

Potter sighed and sat behind his desk, looking like a student who was play-acting at being a teacher. "Just before my sixteenth birthday I stayed with your mum for a fortnight. I slept on the couch. She was my teacher when I was younger. Someone who was working for the Order of the Phoenix—a group of people fighting Voldemort—lived next door to her. I was waiting for the Ministry wizards to leave that house so I could go over there safely, but—"

"What do you mean _Ministry_ wizards? Aren't they supposed to be _good_?"

"Well—yes and no. Long story. What's important is that I have this scar," he said, lifting his hair from his brow so that Teddy could see it. He let his hair flop over his scar again and explained how he got it, how Voldemort lost his body, but the scar linked him to Voldemort. Teddy understood now what Mr Ollivander had been talking about: his wand was the one his grandfather, Potter's father, had been using when he was murdered. He put his hand in his pocket, touching his wand a little reverently, thinking about the man who'd last used it to try—unsuccessfully—to defend his family.

"About a year before he got his body back I had already started to feel the link to him more strongly. In something like a dream that turned out to be real I saw him kill a man, a Muggle who'd stumbled on him. When he had his body back I could feel the link even more strongly so the headmaster wanted me to learn Occlumency to keep Voldemort out of my head, prevent him from knowing my thoughts, from possessing me and making me do what he wanted me to do."

" _Possessing_ you?" Teddy frowned. "But he wasn't dead, yeah? He had a body, you said."

Potter was grim. "Voldemort could possess people without being dead. And because of my scar he could possess me from a distance, unfortunately. I failed miserably at Occlumency during my fifth year. When I was at your mum's house, on the morning of my sixteenth birthday, which was also her birthday, I blacked out for a little while. Afterward I asked her whether I'd used my wand or touched her. She said I hadn't. But that was the only time that was unaccounted for while I was in her house, so I have to wonder whether she was protecting me from knowing what I'd done, or what _he'd_ done while he possessed me. She must have realised that it wasn't really _me_."

Teddy felt sick. He didn't want to think of his mum being with a sixteen-year-old boy when she was thirty-two but he also didn't want to think of some evil wizard possessing the man sitting before him and doing unspeakable things to his mum, things that led to his being born.

"How do you know?" Teddy said suddenly.

"What?" Potter looked baffled.

"How do you know that's what happened?" he said, his heart in his throat.

Potter's lips were drawn very thin. "I don't, actually. I've assumed. I want to visit your mum this afternoon and find out what really happened. I hope that she won't feel the need to protect me anymore and she'll tell me exactly what I—he—did."

Teddy felt like his stomach was leaping around inside him with anxiety. "But—but what if it was traumatic for her? You want to make her relive that?"

Potter took a deep breath. "I may be wrong about this, but I don't think she was traumatised. When I realised that I'd lost time she—she was mostly concerned for me. She didn't act like someone who—well, anyway, that's why I was rather shocked to see you and learn who your mum was. Honestly, I thought that the only woman I'd ever been with was my wife."

"You're _married_?" Teddy said, before realising that he sounded like he was asking, _Someone married you, of all people?_ On the other hand, he _was_ thinking that.

Potter gave him a rueful smile. "Yeah, so I reckon that would make my wife your stepmother. And we have twin daughters. They're eight years old: Ruby and Rory."

Teddy swallowed, digesting this. _Sisters. I have little sisters._ He'd always wondered what it would be like to have brothers or sisters, but it had never occurred to him, when he learned who his father was, that he would have got on with his life, married, had kids. He'd always imagined him waiting to be found by Teddy, his life suspended, poised for the moment when his son would walk into his life and make it complete. He felt very stupid. _Of course he's married and has kids. Apart from being a wizard, even a famous one, he's a normal person, basically. Even more normal than Uncle Jack._ He thought of his uncle, the presents he'd brought to the farm for his birthday. His mum wasn't happy, saying that it was too extravagant. She was also suspicious about where Jack had got the money. He'd been dodgy about it.

"So," Potter said, with a forced-looking smile, "when do you want to meet your, erm, _them_?"

"My stepmother and my sisters," Teddy said dully, still absorbing everything.

"Yeah," Potter said, turning a little green, as though he might spew any minute. "Oh, and do you think your mum will be busy this afternoon? Or is there a better time to speak to her?"

Teddy had been staring into space for a moment, trying to imagine Potter talking to his mother. He raised his eyes to him, confused. "Huh?" The queasy feeling had returned. Looking at Potter was like seeing a worst-case scenario version of his future self. He swallowed, trying to tell his middle to stop _writhing_. And there was something else about Potter that bothered him…

" _Harry Potter_ , you bloody berk!"

Both he and his professor—Teddy still couldn't quite think of Potter as his _father_ —turned to the office door in surprise. A very tall red-haired man in maroon robes had pulled the door open with a sudden jerk. He didn't seem like the professor type and he was _very_ cross.

Upon seeing the two of them together, the man opened his mouth, snapped it shut again, and then simply breathed, " _Well bugger me_ ," as he moved his eyes back and forth between them.

Potter smiled feebly at him. "Erm, hi, Ron. I was just talking to—"

"—your son? The one you conveniently _forgot_ to mention to, oh, _everyone_?" He turned to Teddy and said offhandedly, "By the way, hi, kid. I'm your uncle. Well, step-uncle, since your sodding _father_ is married to my poor sister."

"Listen, Ron—"

"Now you want me to listen, do you? I'd have been perfectly willing when you were giving this story away to my competition, but _noooo_ , that didn't happen." He pulled a newspaper out of his robe pocket and waved it in Potter's face. "So, what did you say to _her_? 'Listen, Rita, I've got an exclusive story to give you and the really brilliant thing is I'll be screwing over my best mate and brother-in-law at the same time! Isn't that grand?' Is that about how it went, Harry?"

Potter stared at him with his mouth open. "Ron, this is _not_ a good time. I never spoke to Rita, I don't know who did, but it could have been anyone in the castle. I'm trying to—"

"—to convince me it's not your fault," Teddy said quietly, glaring at Potter. He no longer felt queasy; instead he felt a rage stirring inside him such as he had never known, even when he'd attacked Carlisle, even when kids in the village school had given him grief about his lack of a father. The glass case began vibrating very rapidly, as did the window glass in the casements.

#/#/#

Harry looked at the boy; he didn't like his tone of voice and he definitely did not like the vibrating glass, which was rising in pitch to a steady whine. "No! That's not what—"

"Oh, it's not?" He turned to Ron. "You'd like an exclusive? Here's your exclusive. Even though it _was_ his fault, _Professor_ Potter wants to act like it wasn't. That's why you want to visit my mum, isn't it?" he said, turning to Harry, who could feel the power emanating from the boy as his rage grew. "You think it's either that dark wizard's fault, for possessing you, or my mum's fault, since she was an adult and you were a kid, but somehow it's never _your_ fault, is it? Even though you _said_ you hadn't learned how to do that Occlu-whatty thing."

Harry swallowed. "No, that's not what—"

"May I be excused?" the boy said between gritted teeth; "I don't want to fall behind in Charms." The air in the room felt charged and the pitch of the vibrating glass grew higher. This day was _not_ starting off well.

"Just a minute, Harriso—I mean, erm, what do you like to be called?" Harry asked, smiling feebly.

"Harrison is fine," he said brusquely. " _That's_ my name. And I'd prefer it if you'd leave my mum alone. I'd actually find some way to go there and stop you seeing her if I could, but thanks to you, Nate and I have detention this afternoon with Professor Snape."

"Snape gave you detention?" Harry said, aghast, remembering him ordering the boys to go down to his office the night before. "But it wasn't your fault—" Harry stopped talking, realising that he shouldn't know this, as the boy was unaware that he'd spied on him. He also didn't think that telling the boy that _he'd_ put the spell on Carlisle would win him good-father points. Luckily, Harrison didn't seem to be listening. _Just like Ruby,_ he thought.

"I don't think she wants to see you," Harrison said, a clear dislike on his face. "She probably doesn't want me to see you, either. Otherwise she might have told me something about you, you know? Or she might not have minded that man in the wand shop guessing that you're my dad."

" _What_?" Harry and Ron said together.

"Ollivander—what did he say?" Harry asked breathlessly, sitting again, his elbows on his desk as he held his head in his hands.

Harrison glared at him truculently. "He tried to call me _Mr Potter_. Professor Snape corrected him. And then when I couldn't get a wand to work, Ollivander—he gave me your dad's." He took it out of his pocket. Harry could see burn marks on the handle. "Said we didn't have to pay for it, but Mum _wanted_ to pay for a wand. She wasn't keen on this one, but Ollivander said it chose me." He glared up at Harry. "I asked if I can be excused, _sir_?"

The hair stood on the back of Harry's neck as he looked at the boy holding James Potter's wand. "You may go. I'm—I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. I thought we should talk."

"Oh, I'm not upset, why should I be? Everyone's talking about my being _born_ like it was a crime. You want someone to _blame_. Why should that _upset_ me?" he growled before pushing past Ron, James Potter's wand still clutched tightly in his hand.

The moment he stepped into the corridor the vibrations sped up and Harry had only a moment to pull Ron to the floor and cast a shield charm over them both before all of the glass in the room burst into millions of shards and the sword of Godric Gryffindor shot out of the broken glass case, embedding itself in the middle of Harry's chair, where he'd been sitting moments before.

Harry looked helplessly at Ron, who stared around the room, at the broken glass everywhere, at the sword. Finally, he said, "Nice to see that he's as even-tempered as _you_ were, Harry."

#/#/#

Ron and Harry left the office after casting numerous charms to repair the broken glass, remove the sword from Harry's desk chair, repair the chair, and return the sword to its display case. As they walked down the stairs to the staff room, Harry attempted to smile at Ron.

"At least I'm not a great Harry-balloon, bobbing around the ceiling of my office."

Ron shook his head. "You know, you might want to reconsider keeping that sword around if your kid's going to do daft things like that."

Harry grimaced. "I can't. What if Dumbledore comes to visit? He gave it to me when he retired and cleaned his stuff out of the head's office. Besides, I wouldn't feel right about it sitting in the empty house while we're at Hogwarts."

"You'd see it on the weekends. Worried about it missing you?"

Harry pushed him roughly as they walked, as if they were both still twelve. "Don't be stupid. I just—it saved my life twice. Yours as well, come to that. And Ginny's, in the Chamber. I like having it to hand, all right?"

"Planning to go through the Veil again? Another visit to Sirius?" Ron raised his eyebrows.

Harry felt like pushing Ron once more but restrained himself. "Don't be stupid," he said again. "And I wasn't 'visiting' Sirius; I wish you wouldn't call it that."

 _The pain in his head had finally subsided and Harry's scar was bleeding freely now. He had to blink the blood out of his right eye while he held the hilt of the sword as tightly as he could, the jewels fitting perfectly into his palm, as they hadn't when he was twelve. He was surprised that the blade had deflected Voldemort's spell but he was glad to know that it could. He'd never understood why Gryffindor had had this sword made. He was a wizard, and wizards duelled with wands and spells, not swords. It might have been for show, so that Gryffindor would be properly attired when he was in the company of Muggles, but clearly there was more to the sword than honed metal and jewels. It had to have enchantments on it, or the metal was forged using some secret magical process._

 _Harry was on the dais, the arch behind him. He could feel the Veil fluttering in an unseen breeze, for it brushed his legs lightly as it moved. He almost felt like he couldn't draw breath, he was so frightened, and if he thought about what he was planning to do in cold blood he very likely wouldn't be able to do it. Gripping the sword in his right hand and his wand in his left, he said, with a growl in his voice, "If you want to kill me you're going to have to do it with your bare hands, Tom Riddle." He hoped he sounded braver than he felt. What he wanted most of all was to run, to lay down sword and wand and ask for mercy. But he would never do that, and not just because he knew that no quarter would be given. He had to do this, no matter the cost. "You don't want to duel with me, remember?" he added, a warning in his voice. He hoped._

 _He watched Voldemort approach, still pointing his wand at him, the inhuman red eyes flashing dangerously. "Perhaps I cannot duel against a brother wand," Voldemort said in that high, cold voice. "But I can use this!" Harry blinked and Voldemort's wand had become a blindingly bright silver sword, at least a foot longer than Gryffindor's sword. Emeralds showed between the long white fingers gripping its hilt and a green snake wound up the silver blade and wrapped around Voldemort's hand, so that the sword was bound to him._

" _Nooooo!"_

" _Ron!" Harry turned at the sound of his best friend's voice as Ron burst into the chamber._

" _Harry! Watch out!" Ron cried, running down to the dais as Voldemort lunged at Harry. Swords clashed, the ringing resounding deafeningly. After Harry struck Voldemort's weapon with his own he twisted his body out of the way. The length of the other blade gave Voldemort the advantage, despite Harry using all of the strength he possessed to push against it with Gryffindor's sword. Voldemort contorted himself so that the blade was poised exactly at Harry's brow, where the bleeding scar slashed through pale skin. All he needed to do was to go a little farther, but Harry saw his opportunity and pushed back with all his might, so hard that he was thrown off-balance himself. He was falling and his hands weren't free so he couldn't stop himself._

" _Nooooo!" Ron cried again, bounding over the bottom rows and dashing up the dais steps but stumbling on the top one. He tried to grab Harry's leg both to break his fall and keep Harry from going through the Veil but grabbed the sword instead. Despite his hand bleeding profusely as he grasped the blade, Ron wouldn't let go, determined to keep Harry on the proper side of the arch. Harry and Voldemort were now a tangle of struggling limbs as they both tried to avoid falling through the Veil, attempting to make the other go through instead. Ron was pulled along, his hand bleeding freely, wrapped around the sword…_

Harry shook his head to clear it; he hadn't thought of that in a while, which was good. He used to have frequent dreams about going through the Veil with Ron and Voldemort.

"What are you going to do?" Ron asked.

Harry eyed Ron as they walked. "You believe me now? You don't think I was trying to screw you over by not giving you an exclusive?"

Ron grimaced. "Sorry about that. I even get why you didn't tell me before now. But when I pick up that rag and see a front-page story I don't know about featuring my best mate—"

"—then you should assume that Rita heard it from someone else, _not_ me."

Ron turned pink. "Again, sorry. But you have to imagine how I feel."

Harry smiled at him with understanding. "I know, Ron. It's got to be especially galling after Rita stole that article about the Ballycastle Bats scandal from you."

"Lew keeps telling me I should be glad that the Quibbler got paid—and paid handsomely. But it _is_ galling. She changed one or two little words here and there and for that she gets her own name put on it. Suddenly _I_ don't exist. I worked for ages on breaking that story! And what do I get in return? A paltry twenty percent of the fee the _Prophet_ paid to the _Quibbler_."

As he put his hand on the knob of the staff room door, Harry said, "Well, to be fair, Ron, you also get a house for you and your family to live in. It's not like you _need_ to make a pile of gold. Lew's place is plenty big for all of you, even with Luna expecting another kid."

Harry gave the password to the gargoyle beside the door, and as they entered the staff room, Ron groaned, "Don't remind me. I can't even grouse about what he pays when he's put the roof over our heads, can I? _And_ we can't move anywhere else because he hardly pays me anything, even though I'm the only reporter he _ever_ pays, _and_ I can't go looking for work elsewhere. That would be _disloyal_ while we're living with him. I'm stuck," he whinged, throwing himself into a chair by the fire.

"I thought you liked Lew," Harry said, frowning, as he walked to the open window, where Hedwig slept on her perch. He woke her gently by stroking her back and was prepared with an owl treat when she tried to nip at his fingers.

"When he's being my _friend_ I do. Sometimes we can go to a Quidditch match together or play chess or talk politics and he's grand. But when he's my boss, or implying that I'm not providing for his daughter—which is _his_ bloody fault—or telling me how to raise my kids—"

"Oh, buggeration," Harry breathed, pausing as he put quill to parchment. " _Your dad_. Not to mention _your mum_. What are they going to say? About all of this?"

"Who are you writing to?"

"Not your parents, but I probably should. The _Prophet_. The little matter of a retraction."

"Write to Rita directly," Ron recommended. "Trust me. She gets worse if you try to go over her head. I've got heel marks on my bum as proof."

"All right," Harry said, writing a very brief request for Rita to come speak to him in person, _without_ her quill. "And if you have any practical advice about how to handle your parents—"

Ron shrugged. "Wish I knew. I'm surprised Mum hasn't already sent you a Howler."

Harry sent Hedwig off with the letter. "Now that I've noticed that she hasn't, I am as well. Although she did say something this morning about shopping after taking the girls to school."

"You're lucky, you are," Ron said, shaking his head. "Dad isn't one to blow up about this sort of thing, so maybe he'll have a chance to calm her down before she sends you a Howler in the middle of a lesson. Say, why aren't you teaching right now?"

Harry sighed. "Ginny's taking the fourth year Ravenclaws this morning. She's the one who suggested I talk to Harrison. I'm taking the fifth year Hufflepuffs on my own next so she can have a break after the overactive brains of Ravenclaw house."

Ron snorted. "You've got that right. I know she _seems_ spacey, but Luna's got these _wheels_ going around in her head constantly, and sometimes the things she comes out with…"

Harry grinned. "Yeah, but you love her. In fact I think that's _why_ you love her."

Ron gave him a small smile. "Well, you know how it is to be around someone who _gets_ you. I reckon I like that best, not having to _explain_ myself to her constantly, unlike—"

Harry put up his hand. "Let's not get into that again, not today. I haven't had to hear a rant from you about Hermione nor from her about you in a while, and I'd rather not."

"Don't worry, Harry. No ranting." Ron grinned, crossing his long legs at the ankle as he stretched luxuriously in the tattered armchair. "Just a moment of gloating, due to my being the one who recognised what a horrid mistake we were together."

" _There's_ an understatement," came a voice from the corner. Theo Nott stood and smiled at them. He'd been sitting quietly in a wing chair, reading, and they had been too busy talking to notice. "Even we Slytherins had to put up with too many of your rows with Granger until you showed her the door." Harry saw that Theo had been reading the _Prophet,_ which he pointed at Harry. "Speaking of women who aren't your wives, _you_ were busy after fifth year, Potter."

Harry rolled his eyes and threw himself into the chair opposite Ron's. "Theo—"

"And you named your son after me! I'm flattered, really."

"He goes by Ted, not Theo. I didn't name him, his mum did. I only just found out about him."

Theo grinned, crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it on the fire. He pulled up a chair from the central table and, turning it around, straddled it backwards. The fire crackled merrily, a photo of Harry at his wedding charring at the corners and curling up as the paper was consumed.

"Lighten up, Harry. I had to give you a hard time. Wouldn't be a good Slytherin if I didn't."

Harry laughed. "You're the only Slytherin I know who has to _try_ to be annoying."

Theo shrugged, leaning his chin on the back of the chair. "It's a two-edged sword—"

" _Speaking of swords_ ," Ron mumbled under his breath.

"—when you're a Slytherin," Theo continued. "Some people won't give you a second look for a job just for _being_ a Slytherin, and others won't give you the time of day if you're not the dark magic sort of Slytherin. I'm lucky Minerva even let me interview for this job."

"Come on, mate," Harry said, slapping Nott's shoulder. "Do you think she was going to give the job to Rita Skeeter? Just because she's an Animagus?"

Theo shrugged again. "Well, Minerva's an Animagus and she was hiring someone for her old job. If it was Herbology or Charms she might not care as much."

"You had an Outstanding OWL in Transfiguration _and_ a NEWT, you couldn't help your dad being a Death Eater or Malfoy giving you the diary in sixth year _and_ you aren't an illegal Animagus. Rita never had a chance once she tried to impress Minerva with _that._ She _knows_ who's registered. She also knew that she had someone really good— _you_."

Theo sighed and nodded. "Thanks, Harry. And because of that _you_ of all people should have known that I wouldn't credit anything in the _Prophet_ by Rita Skeeter unless it's appeared under Ron's name in the _Quibbler_ first," he added, gesturing at Ron.

Harry grimaced. "Right. Sorry—I know there's no love lost between you and Rita. I hope she agrees to hear me out. And I'm going to see Tilda after the last lesson today."

Ron raised his eyebrows. "What does my sister think of this?"

Theo looked quite concerned. "Yes, Harry—how's Ginny taking all of it?"

Harry gazed into the fire. "Better now than she was at first. It helps that she likes him. My son. She's not wild about the fact that she didn't know that Tilda and I had done anything beyond kiss, which is what I told her when I was sixteen. As far as I knew, that was true."

"What?" Ron turned red. "You never said you were snogging an older woman that summer!"

Harry stared at Ron as though he was an idiot. "Of course I didn't, Ron."

"But you told _Ginny_."

"Yes, I told the one friend I had who I thought would understand. She was perfect, just listening and not judging, not trying to give me advice or demanding details."

Ron was indignant. "I would not have tried to give you advice! I mean—what did I know?"

"No, that would be Hermione. _You'd_ have been asking for details. That's what happened when I kissed Cho. I didn't want to relive that. I felt like I could tell Ginny anything. I still do."

Theo grinned. "You should marry that girl or something. Don't you think so, Ron?"

Harry couldn't help smiling. "I should have realised sooner, that's what I should have done. I'm damn lucky to have her. Or rather, that she's agreed to have me," he said, sighing. "It'll be weird to see Tilda again. I don't have feelings for her now, but she was the first woman I—I felt—" He eyed Ron cautiously.

"It's okay, Harry. I'm not cross that you were interested in someone before Ginny, as long as it's _strictly_ in the past," he said, raising an eyebrow. "Look at me. Every time I'm at a family gathering with Bill I'm hoping no one brings up that I once asked my sister-in-law to a ball."

Harry grimaced, remembering how miserable Ron had been after Fleur had turned him down and how sweet Ginny had been with him at first. He also remembered how she had bristled and told Hermione what had happened to him and Ron. Ginny was not someone to trifle with. He thought, too, of her distress when she'd come very close to going to the ball with him, if she hadn't accepted Neville first. Ginny could be hard as nails but he knew that she had a soft centre as well and the last thing he wanted to do was to wound her further.

"Come on, Ron," Harry said, forcing himself to speak lightly in an attempt to lift his own spirits. "The last time anyone said anything it was Fred and George, and you know how they are."

"How they are? Is that what you call Foot in Mouth Disease?" Ron eyed him shrewdly now. "Sure you wouldn't like someone to come with you this afternoon?"

Harry grimaced. "If I wanted to take anyone it would be Theo, not my nosy brother-in-law, but no, I need to do this alone. What's the matter—don't trust me?"

Ron shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. "Should I _dis_ trust you? The last time you were in her presence for five minutes the two of you—"

"No, we didn't!" Harry cried, standing, his hands balled into fists at his side.

"Calm down," Ron said, laughing nervously. "Can't you take a joke? I don't think you're going off to cheat on my sister, all right?"

"We just need to talk," Harry said quietly, sinking into his chair again.

"Right," Theo agreed, gazing into the fire. "You just need to talk."

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	27. Family Reunion

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Twenty-Seven**

 **Family Reunion**

 **#/#/#**

"We have nothing to talk about."

"Tilda! Of course we do!" Harry put his foot against the door as she tried to close it. When she'd first seen him, the colour had drained from her face and she'd moved her mouth soundlessly. It had seemed unnecessary to tell her who he was. But when he said that they needed to talk he hadn't expected her to flatly refuse and close the door on him.

 _Harrison was right. She doesn't want to see me._ He felt irked that the boy knew his mother better than Harry, though that was perfectly logical. He wondered whether he should have used his Metamorphmagus abilities to disguise himself. "I think you know why I'm here, Tilda," he said quietly, keeping his foot against the door. "And believe me, I don't want to use magic to get into your house. I'd rather be invited in."

"Need to be invited?" she asked acidly. "Like a vampire?"

He sighed wearily. "Please, Tilda."

She sagged helplessly and opened the door. "Yes, I know why you're here. I'd simply hoped that it would take longer for—all of it." Harry entered slowly, closing the door behind him and following her to the kitchen. She went immediately to a large black Aga cooker and put a kettle on for tea. Still facing the cooker, she said, "Have a seat, Harry. You've come a long way."

"It didn't actually take long. I Apparated from Hogsmeade, the village near Hogwarts castle."

"Right. I assumed you'd taken the train. Stupid. Sorry. Not used to thinking about—"

"Don't be sorry," he said, his voice catching. It seemed a strange, awkward conversation to be having after so long. "Please sit, Tilda. We really do need to talk."

She sat at the other end of the long, well-scrubbed table, her hands lying flat on the pale wood, still not meeting his eyes. Harry had imagined saying to her, " _You haven't changed a bit_ ," but that would have been a lie. She had aged noticeably, with deep lines at the corners of her eyes and hair that was a mixture of silver and gold. She seemed to get more sun living on a farm than in Little Whinging; she had a scattering of freckles across her nose and her hands were slightly reddened and rough, as though she'd been working out-of-doors. He had half been afraid that he would feel the old yearning when he saw her and was both relieved that he felt absolutely no attraction and more than a little embarrassed by his behaviour as a teenager.

"Hogsmeade, you said?" she said suddenly. "Hogwarts castle? So—so someone called you to come to the school?" she said in a shaking voice.

"No," he said, surprised by what had caught her attention. "No, I didn't need to come to the castle. I was already there. I'm a teacher at Hogwarts. Defence Against the Dark Arts."

"Why, that great, sodding—" she gasped. "He—he might have _said_ something," she ground out, striking the table with the flats of her palms.

"Who? Ted? He didn't know until—"

"Teddy? I don't mean him. I mean your Professor Snape." She frowned, her brow furrowed. "And even after sending me the owl, he still said _nothing_ ," she went on, shaking her head.

"Owl? He wrote to you?" Harry was confused. First Snape had a kid and now he was writing to Tilda. He felt an irrational twinge of jealousy, even while feeling no attraction to her whatsoever.

"He thought it would be best if I had my own post owl, to write to Teddy without having to wait for him to write first. Kids. You know."

"Ah." He swallowed, nervous about bringing _it_ up. Perhaps they could discuss owls and jobs and drink tea and somehow avoid the two-ton hippogriff in the room. Harry sighed, knowing that he had to do it sooner or later. "Tilda, when I first saw Harris—er, I mean Ted—"

"Teddy," she said quickly.

"His friend calls him Ted, but all right—Teddy," he said, flustered by her interruption.

"His friend?" she interjected hopefully. "He's made a friend?" She smiled but seemed like she might cry. "I'd hoped, but wasn't sure I dared to. I asked whether the children are nice."

"Tilda, please," he said suddenly, his voice hard. "This would be easier if you would stop interrupting me. I have something important to ask you."

She blinked rapidly and looked at the table, putting her hand to her brow. "I only wanted to know how he is."

"No," Harry said, trying not to let anger get the better of him. "You wanted to distract me. It's not as though I blame you. But—but I wish you'd _told_ me. When I woke up. I wish you'd have realised that I wouldn't blame you. When that boy walked into the Great Hall—well, it was a bit of a shock for everyone, as you might imagine, since I have no memory of—well—"

She looked up at him suddenly, her light eyes flashing. "Oh, God. How is Ginny taking it?"

Harry sighed. "She's fine. She likes him. Teddy. She was mostly cross with me at first, thought I'd lied to her years ago when I told her about that summer. She finally accepted that I truly didn't remember anything happening between us but a little kissing."

"And your girls?"

Harry frowned. _How much did Snape tell her about me?_ "They don't know yet. It's a bit tricky, you see, to tell them that they have an older brother whose mother isn't _their_ mum. They're only eight years old. But we'd like to give him the chance to get to know his sisters. We'd like to—to take him home with us this weekend, if that's all right with you. And if he's agreeable. We have a house in Durham and don't like closing it up for ten months at a time."

"Why shouldn't he be agreeable?" she asked, her voice shaking.

"Well, he's not very pleased with me. And this was in the morning paper," he added, pushing a copy of the _Prophet_ across the table toward her. As she read it she grew paler and paler.

"How—how dare—" He could see that her hands were shaking as she held the paper.

"Yes, Rita dares. I wrote to her, asked her to talk. But I'd like to know what really happened first." He swallowed. "I didn't _force_ you, did I? Even though it wasn't technically me…"

She wouldn't meet his eyes. "No, Harry. Is that all you wanted to know?"

"Imperius," he said to himself very softly.

"What?" She had raised her eyes to his and was clearly straining to hear what he'd said.

"I said _Imperius_. He must have used Imperius to make you—to make you—which means that I—he did force you, in a way." He shook his head, feeling sick. "I'm so sorry, Tilda. For you to have gone through that and then protect me afterward, so I wouldn't know what I'd done…"

She frowned. "Imperius? Erm, oh, yes. Imperius. I, erm, right. That. Well, you know how it is. Not so bad." Her voice quavered as she spoke and then she sprung up suddenly, taking a teapot down from a shelf, fetching some tea leaves to add to it, and filling it with water from the kettle.

He watched her nervous actions sympathetically. "When did you realise that it wasn't me? And that you weren't acting of your own free will?" he said very quietly.

"Oh, erm, well, you know. You pointed your wand and said, 'imperius,' and then I—I—" She trailed off, turning her back to him and taking two cups and saucers from a Welsh dresser.

Harry frowned as he watched her. _The incantation is 'Imperio,' not 'Imperius.' She could have a faulty memory on that, though,_ he reasoned. Something felt wrong to him.

"What happened after that? Tell me everything."

She handed him his tea, turning red. "Harry, is this why you came to see me? Because I really don't want to discuss this, least of all with you."

"Tilda, I'm going to be meeting with Rita and setting her straight. You _saw_ what she wrote about you. I need to tell her—something. Don't worry, she won't put details in the paper. But I need _something_ to go on. I'll tell her it wasn't your fault. I was the one who was supposed to learn Occlumency, it's my fault Voldemort got into my brain and possessed me."

She gave what sounded like a forced laugh. "What do you need to hear from me, Harry? Why do we need to go over this? What's done is done. Can't we move on?"

"But—but why didn't you _tell_ me?"

"And if I had, would you have believed it? Since you didn't remember any of it? And do you think I wanted to distract you from—from what you had to do?" Harry was silent at that.

He scrutinised her as she leaned against the dresser with her arms folded across her body, her eyes slightly bloodshot. "I still would have liked to know," he said softly. "And it wouldn't hurt if you talked to Teddy and told him that I'm not a monster. I'm not trying to place _blame_ for him. I have a life, you know? And it's rather changed. But I _want_ it to change. I want to welcome him into the family." Harry sighed. "I grew up without a dad. When I found out that I had a godfather I was so excited. But I lost him." His voice caught; even after so many years the memory of Sirius still had the power to paralyse him.

She was silent for what seemed a long time. "Take me with you," she finally said.

He jerked his head up in surprise. "What?"

"Take me with you to the school. So I can talk to Ginny and your daughters. There's no reason for you to bear this burden alone. I can explain to them why I never said anything—it was for their sake, after all, as well as yours. I knew that you'd have a _life_ , and you do. I didn't want to intrude on it. Now that I have, I think it's my duty to apologise and hope that they forgive me."

"Tilda, for the last time, there's nothing to forgive. You'd already decided that it was a horrid idea for us to be together. I know that you never would have—I mean, you wouldn't have gone back on that if you were in control of your—if you were in control," he finished softly, watching her face. There it was again—the guilty expression. _Is that why she didn't know the incantation? She simply changed her mind about us—then realised that it wasn't me after all?_ He understood her guilt at last and felt abashed that he was finding it very hard to respect her now. When she'd decided that they shouldn't be together he'd at least _respected_ her decision, though he wasn't happy about it. He wasn't sure what to think now.

"All—all right," he said, against his better judgment. "I'll take you to Hogwarts. Ted—erm, Teddy—probably has questions for you."

#/#/#

The silence in the room was deafening. Harry had said, "Girls, this is Theodore. Teddy. He's your older brother. This is his mum, Tilda. Say hello, Ruby and Rory." Dead silence. Ruby and Rory stared at the boy, speechless, while Tilda stood with her hand on his shoulder, smiling feebly at the little girls, then at Ginny, who despite her best efforts was clearly feeling threatened.

Ginny in turn stood behind her own children, touching them lightly, not chiding them for not greeting their brother, merely adding to the not-talking. Harry thought that this was possibly the longest any of the people in the room had ever failed to speak. All that could be heard was the crackling of the sitting room fire and the wind rattling the casements. He hovered between the two groups, his stomach in knots. He wanted to say something but couldn't think of what.

"Ow!" _That_ wasn't what he'd planned to say, but when the door behind him struck him hard he couldn't help himself. He turned to find Hermione in the entrance to their flat, Ron behind her, trying to keep her from entering and failing. She was so crackling with magical energy that Ron pulled his hands back, crying out in pain from the shock. Harry rubbed the back of his head where the door had struck him and frowned at his two best friends.

"This isn't really a good time, you two—" he started to say as Hermione thrust her face into his.

"At what point were you planning to tell me—" She stopped abruptly when she saw the boy standing with his mother on the other side of the room, looking exactly as Harry had at the same age except for the eye colour and lack of a scar. "Great Merlin," she breathed, her eyes wide.

Harry turned on Ron. "I suppose you told her!" he said crossly. "I was going to do it myself—"

Ron was indignant. "Oh, no, you're not blaming me. She read the paper and Neville Flooed me to talk some sense into her. She'd have been here _sooner_ if I hadn't slowed her down."

"I told you, Mum!" Ruby burst out, a note of vindication in her voice. "I _told_ you I saw a boy who looked just like Dad! In the book shop! It was _him_." She pointed at Teddy, who recoiled from her finger instinctively. Ginny gently put her hand on Ruby's arm, lowering it.

"Don't point, Love. Yes, you saw a boy who looks like your Dad." Ginny smiled feebly.

Teddy bristled. "I'm _standing_ right here," he snarled at his sister. Gazing at Ginny as though hurt, he said, "And _you're_ my stepmother? But your name isn't Potter!"

"Yes, it is," she explained patiently. "But when I'm teaching I go by Professor Weasley, which is my maiden name. I'm sorry I didn't say anything but everything was so—"

" _Hades_!" Rory cried as the Crup ran into the room, heading straight for Tilda. She began to smile at him, then leapt onto an ottoman when Hades snarled and snapped his jaws at her.

"What's wrong with that dog?" she cried. "Why does it have _two tails_?" The Crup snarled and barked at her, leaping straight up in the air repeatedly as though he had a spring in his bottom.

"Oh, he's not really a Jack Russell terrier," Hermione informed her, speaking over the argument between Ruby and Ginny about keeping Ruby's pet locked up. Hermione had evidently forgotten her rage at Harry, if only momentarily. "He's a Crup. A Crup is a magical ani—"

"Not _now_ , Hermione!" Harry snapped irritably, trying to catch the Crup's collar as he bounced up and down, still barking angrily at Tilda.

"Don't you take that tone with me, Harry!" Hermione responded indignantly, having no trouble finding her temper again. Harry rolled his eyes when Ron started berating her for taking a tone with _Harry_ while Ginny and Ruby continued to go round about Hades.

Teddy backed away from the yapping animal until he was stopped by the mantel. Finally, Harry pulled out his wand and shouted, " _Petrificus totallus!_ " over the din. The small, fierce beast went stiff all over and fell onto the carpet. Harry picked him up. Holding Hades under his arm like a package to be posted, he said to Ruby, "Your mother _told_ you to keep him locked up this afternoon. You know Crups don't like Muggles!" He had to shout to be heard over Ron and Hermione's row.

"I'm handling this, Harry," Ginny started to say before Ruby piped up.

"Well, you should've _said_ that you were bringing a _Muggle_ to Hogwarts," Ruby responded crossly, crossing her arms and sticking out her lower lip.

"It doesn't like—" Tilda began indignantly.

The fire suddenly flared green and Teddy leapt away from the mantel in alarm. Two identical red-haired heads that seemed to have been cut off their owners' bodies were sitting in vivid emerald flames. The heads did not appear to care about the fire licking at their closely-trimmed beards. Tilda screamed and pointed, her eyes round. Teddy joined his mother on the ottoman, where she held him tightly.

"Hullo, all!" Fred Weasley said cheerfully as he glanced around the crowded, noisy sitting room.

"Got a bone to pick with you, Harry," George added with a smile, nodding at his brother-in-law, who still stood with the board-stiff Crup under his arm. Ron and Hermione continued bickering, not noticing the advent of Ron's brothers.

"This _really_ isn't a good time, Fred. Or George," Ginny said through gritted teeth.

"Hullo, Ginny," Fred said brightly, as though she'd greeted him with open arms. "Ah, the new pet working out well, I see," Fred observed, nodding at Harry. "Got him stuffed. Yeah. Much easier than obedience training."

"Uncle Fred!" Ruby complained. Rory giggled.

"How d'you know _I'm_ not Fred?" George asked her, in a mock-hurt voice.

"It's a twin thing," Rory responded for her sister, shrugging.

Fred spotted Teddy. "Ah. There he is."

(" _He might have told us when we were in school, if it weren't for you,_ " Ron said to Hermione.)

"Well!" George said, nodding. "The paper didn't lie. For once. He _is_ Harry all over again."

Tilda seemed to realise that she could come down off the ottoman. She strode to the fire, no longer looking frightened of the talking heads. "I am _tired_ of people—even parts of them—discussing my son as though he is not _present_ _!_ "

George have her an appraising look and a half-smile. "Hullo. Don't believe we've met."

"Not bad, Harry," Fred commented, waggling his eyebrows at Tilda suggestively. "Older than I would have thought, though. You never said you'd taken up a new hobby after your fifth year."

"I didn't—" Harry began, his face hot.

"Are you—are you _flirting_ with me?" Tilda said incredulously.

" _Fred and George_!" Ginny scolded them, sounding uncannily like her mother.

(" _Oh, it's all my fault, is it?_ " Hermione returned acidly.)

It was unclear which twin Tilda might have been addressing. She gazed around in disbelief. "If I'd known—" She shook her head, looking at each one of them in turn, except for her son, coming to Harry last. "I never should have asked to come. First you make me ride that—that _Nightmare Bus_ , which should _not_ be legal! It's a hazard to life and limb and—and _sanity_ —"

"What did you do to my mum?" Teddy demanded to know as Ginny tried to reassure Tilda about the Knight Bus. Hermione poked Ron in the chest with her finger as she growled at him.

"It's a magical bus," Harry explained to Teddy before addressing Tilda again. "Sorry," he said sheepishly, hefting Hades under his arm. "I thought we'd cleaned all the sick off you. I don't know why Madam Marsh still takes the bus. It's never agreed with her."

"And _then_ you bring me to this _ruin_ of a place! I mean, I could put my whole head through that gap in the wall!" she cried, pointing at the perfectly solid stone wall beside the fireplace. "One of your kids could fall out of it! And this is where my _son_ is going to _school?_ " She had become very shrill, her eyes wild.

"Harry!" Hermione said suddenly, ignoring Ron now. "You didn't put a True Sight Charm on her before you brought her here? How could you be so irresponsible?"

Harry heard Fred agree and Ginny leapt to his defence, while Ruby agreed with her uncle and Rory put her face in her sister's, disagreeing.

"Would that have kept my foot from going through steps?" Tilda wanted to know.

"Well, no," Ron admitted, also abandoning his row with Hermione. "That would still happen. One of the hazards of Hogwarts. But it wouldn't seem like the place was tumbling down around you if you had the Charm."

"Sorry," Harry said again. "Forgot. Didn't learn how. Never brought a Muggle here before."

Hermione sighed in exasperation. "Here, let me. I learned it from Professor McGonagall at the end of sixth year, when my parents came to visit me in the hospital wing."

Tilda backed up as Hermione approached her with her wand out. Ginny, Fred, Ruby, and Rory continued to row about whether Harry had made a mistake while George couldn't seem to make up his mind, agreeing with each person making an argument either for or against Harry.

"Oh, no you don't," Tilda quavered, watching Hermione's wand move closer.

"Get a grip—" Ron said.

"Calm down," Hermione snapped at her. "I'm going to make it possible for you to see Hogwarts as it really is, without the Muggle-repelling charms interfering with—"

" _Muggle repelling!_ " Tilda gasped. "Oh, that's _lovely_ , that is, as though we're _pests_ —"

"You're not much of an argument _against_ that, are you?" Ron grumbled.

"Someone mention pests? Are the mice a bother again? Shall I frighten them for you?" Mad-Eye Moody growled, floating through the door and also through Ron, whose shout of protest (due to the cold) merely prompted the ghost to say, "Shut it, Weasley. Next time don't block the bloody door."

"But you didn't come in through the bloody door!" Ron complained, still shivering.

"I did in my way, laddie," Moody replied.

"I meant—"

"Well, this I didn't expect," Moody commented, ignoring Ron's whinging. When he saw Tilda he nodded at her. Paler than Moody, she backed up onto the ottoman again and a scream seemed ready to erupt from her. "But perhaps I should have done," he added. " _You're_ here."

"Bugger off, Moody!" Harry said crossly. "I swear, sometimes I think I'd rather have Peeves following me around."

"That can be arranged," Moody grunted, not appearing to be offended. "Shall I fetch him?"

" _NO_ _!_ " cried Harry, Ron and Hermione while Tilda and Teddy cowered on the far side of the room and Ginny and the girls continued to row with each other and Fred and George.

"Mum—" Ruby said, pointing at the window.

"Not _now_ , Ruby—" Ginny ground out, clearly losing her patience.

"But Nana's owl is at the window," Rory said, pointing. Harry glanced up. Sure enough, the owl that the Weasleys had bought after poor old Errol had breathed his last was on the windowsill.

The owl had a bright red envelope in its beak.

"Bloody hell," Harry breathed when he saw that. Ginny jerked the window open, allowing the owl to fly in. He perched on the mantel and waited in agitation for someone to claim the red envelope, as though he knew what he was delivering and didn't want it to go off while it was still in his beak.

"Trust Mum to be on-the-spot with one of her Howlers," a twin said from the fire. Harry wasn't sure which one it was. He took a step toward the mantel but a moment later felt warm liquid soaking through his robes on his left side. Looking down, he saw that the still-stiff Hades had lost control of his bladder. A puddle formed around Harry's damp left shoe.

Harry swore vociferously, prompting both Ginny and Tilda to yell and put their hands on the shoulders of their respective children in a gesture of protectiveness. Laughter rang out from the fireplace. Harry felt a strong urge to put out the fire by getting the Crup to urinate on it.

"I _told_ you that Hades needed walkies, Mum!" Ruby whinged.

"Can I go now?" Teddy wanted to know. "Professor Snape agreed to postpone my detention but I still have to do it."

"He gave you detention!" Tilda exclaimed. "You've already got _detention_?"

Harry held the damp Crup at arm's length. "That was my fault, you see," he said at the same time that Teddy also bitterly confirmed that it was Harry's fault.

" _What_?" Tilda and Hermione said, outraged. This caused Ron to start berating Hermione again for sticking her nose into things that didn't concern her.

"So much fuss about a detention?" Fred or George said from the fire.

"How many detentions do you reckon we had when we were in school?" the other twin asked his counterpart calmly. The answer was drowned in the din of Hermione and Ron's new row and Teddy's self-defence, explaining that he hadn't done anything to Carlisle.

"Who is _Carlisle_?" Tilda wanted to know.

"Somebody shut the window," Rory commanded. "I just saw a bug fly in."

"Ruby—I mean Rory— _please_ ," Ginny said, massaging her temples.

"Oh, erm, I mean, sort of my fault—" Harry stuttered.

"Daddy!" Ruby cried. "I think Nana's howler is going to go off!"

Hermione and Ron broke off their argument, took Hades from Harry and helped Ginny clean up the mess while Harry strode across the room to deal with the Howler. But he took a second too long and the red envelope exploded, causing the owl to rise into the air in a cloud of feathers, his talons dangerously close to Harry's head.

" _WHY DID I NEED TO READ IN THE NEWSPAPER THAT MY DAUGHTER'S HUSBAND HAS AN ILLEGITIMATE CHILD WITH ANOTHER WOMAN? WHEN WERE YOU PLANNING TO TELL—_ "

"Oh, bugger," Ron cried, his hands over his ears. Hades barked at the top of his lungs and leapt at Tilda again.

"Ron!" Ginny exclaimed in dismay. This seemed to intensify when she realised that her brothers' heads were telling her daughters about some of the scrapes they'd got into in school to earn their detentions. She looked like she thought they were giving the girls ideas.

"Who told you to do undo the spell, Ron?" Hermione demanded of him.

"It was a sodding accident! I was trying to—"

"Well, what have we here?" said a familiar voice from near the window, which was still open. Harry looked up to find the last person he wanted to see, under normal circumstances, though in this case he _had_ asked her to meet him. He sincerely wished now that he hadn't.

Her eyes glittered behind her bejewelled spectacles and an acid-green quill was poised in one red-taloned hand. Despite the shouting of the Howler, Tilda, Teddy, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Ruby and Rory, plus the yapping of the Crup and the laughter of Fred and George's heads as they recounted their glory days, Rita Skeeter's smug, self-satisfied voice carried above it all:

"Am I interrupting—What shall we call it? A _family reunion_?"

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	28. True Sight

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Twenty-Eight**

 **True Sight**

 **#/#/#**

She sped down the stairs, her feet rolling under her as she ran her hand along the curving wall to steady herself, for there was no rail. Each time her fingers felt like they were going to go through a gap in the masonry she recoiled and her heart sped up still more. She wasn't certain how much faster it could go without giving out.

When she reached the bottom, she pushed through the tapestry that concealed the entrance to the curving stairs from the enormous hall. Cobwebs were everywhere in the space, shrouding the tall, narrow window openings that had probably once held leaded glass. The ubiquitous webs covered the overturned benches and now-petrified food that, ages ago, had been left to rot on the long tables, as though Miss Havisham had had her aborted wedding feast there.

Rats still crawled hopefully over the food, and though she shuddered at the sight of the vermin she forced herself to go on, running down the centre of the hall. She glanced up momentarily to see the night sky through the ruined roof far overhead. Bats flew in and out of gaping holes. Heaps of fallen roof tiles were scattered amongst the food on the tables. Owls roosted on broken rafters reaching out into nothingness.

Leaping over building debris and fearless rats, she finally reached the entrance hall, unsure what to do next. The huge wooden door, though it seemed rotten enough to crumble at a touch, was reinforced with metal that was orange with rust. A skeleton in torn clothing guarded it with an equally rusted sword. She fought the scream that rose to her lips and only momentarily considered rushing the skeleton and the door to see whether they would crumble into dust at her onslaught. Instead she plunged down another set of stairs, illuminated by the moon shining through the enormous gaps in the crumbling, curving walls. She had to settle again for running her hands along the uneven stonework. The mortar, often as not, disintegrated beneath her fingertips.

At the bottom of the stairs she saw a whitish glow. She hesitated to go on but as the glow grew nearer she saw that it was being held by a figure in long black robes, a hood pulled up to obscure the face. She felt another scream rising in her throat and would have released it but she froze when a thin, almost skeletal hand closed around her wrist and a deep, curious voice emerged from beneath the cowl:

"Miss Harrison, may I ask what you are doing here?"

#/#/#

"I tell ye, Headmistress, it was a Muggle!"

Minerva McGonagall shook her head sadly at Filch as he stood before the huge front doors of the castle, wielding his mop like a sword, defending his precious floors against filth. "Argus, I assure you, a stray Muggle simply could not enter the castle without assistance. The anti-Muggle charms that we employ—"

"But I _saw_ her," he insisted, a vein in his forehead pulsing wildly. Mrs Norris stalked the stone floor beside him, her tail fat as a bottle-brush. _This_ was something in which Minerva put far more credit than Filch's ravings. If Mrs Norris felt there was a reason to puff herself up then something was indeed in the castle that should not be.

Minerva nodded at Filch and said, "All right, then. Which way did _she_ go?"

"Down to the dungeons," he intoned ominously, gripping his mop with white knuckles, as though he imagined the intruder making unspeakable messes down there.

Minerva did not comment but in the blink of an eye changed into a medium-sized tabby cat. She conferred with Mrs Norris, who reiterated (in her way) Mr Filch's assertion that the strange woman had fled down the stairs. Minerva turned and crept silently down the curving stone steps, catching a whiff along the way of someone who had just walked there who had recently been around horses. _Only Grubbly-Plank has anything to do with the Thestrals, and they don't have the same scent as horses,_ she reflected, continuing to descend.

When she reached the bottom, she sat in a shadowy corner, watching with interest as the only two people in the corridor entered an office. There was indeed a Muggle woman in the castle, but now that Minerva had seen her she had a good idea who she was. She also had no doubt that the woman was in good hands. She knew that the pair had not seen her but she still waited until the office door closed before resuming her human form and returning to the entrance hall, where Filch still stood before the doors, grey-faced.

"Severus has everything in hand, Argus," she tried to reassure him. "She is the mother of a student. If I were you I should worry more about finishing the mopping before the evening meal. Carry on," she said tersely, sweeping past him into the Great Hall, not wishing to get into a drawn-out discussion. She, for one, could never forget—nor forgive—how enthusiastic Filch had been about the reign of Dolores Umbridge. She was not as indulgent as Albus Dumbledore concerning slights like these. She did not think that his being a Squib excused his behaviour, as Albus seemed to.

To Minerva McGonagall, some things were simply unforgivable.

#/#/#

"Please have a seat, Miss Harrison."

Tilda looked around the office in amazement. After he'd put the True Sight Charm on her she felt like she'd been looking at the world out-of-focus and had suddenly had laser eye-surgery. Seeing him in his teacher's robes, she also felt rather out-of-place, more so than when Harry had let her into the tower from the grounds and had taken her up the curving stairs to the flat. Harry had still worn the Muggle clothes in which he'd come to see her and Ginny had removed her robes, like a coat, revealing a simple grey skirt and white blouse. Their girls had worn uniforms for the Muggle school they attended and Teddy had worn his school robes, which she'd seen before. Harry's friends were dressed more like the people she'd seen in Diagon Alley, as was the woman who had appeared out of thin air, though that was hardly comforting. She couldn't tell what the talking heads in the fire might have been wearing.

She pulled her jacket around her as though for protection and hoped that her jeans weren't too daring. His desk was piled with rolls of parchment on one half, the other half holding neat racks of labelled vials containing semi-liquids in a range of mossy colours. She sat in a chair before the desk, wishing she'd read some of Teddy's books before he'd started school. _Do wizards burn Muggles at the stake who've wandered into places where they shouldn't be?_ she wondered. Harry had never mentioned this, but the account of his run-in with the wizarding legal system wasn't encouraging, and the dedication to archaic clothes and lighting threw her more than she'd expected, even after Diagon Alley. She didn't know to what extent a dedication to archaic social customs might permeate the culture.

Professor Snape took out his wand again and Tilda instinctively winced, in case he was going to put another spell on her. She had been utterly unprepared for his putting the True Sight Charm on her and wasn't certain now that she was glad he had. But he wasn't directing a spell at her this time. The pile of parchments on the desk flew into pigeonholes in a bookcase behind him. Another wave of his wand produced a tray of food, including a steaming pot of tea.

Tilda raised an eyebrow as he poured a cup for her. "Are you supposed to let me see you do that sort of thing?" she asked as she took the cup and saucer from him.

He showed no reaction but said in an even voice, "Parents of Hogwarts students are not included under the law that restricts us from displaying our magic to Muggles. Certainly, if a Muggle is within the walls of Hogwarts castle, the damage is already done."

 _Damage_ , she thought. _What is that supposed to mean?_ "I see," she lied, forcing her mouth into a half-smile.

"Now, then, Miss Harrison. You said that Potter—erm, Harry—brought you here. Was he planning to return you to your home? Or are you staying here tonight as a guest?"

She looked around nervously. "I had hoped to go back home. It wasn't as though everything went swimmingly. It was total chaos, and just when I thought things couldn't get any worse this reporter showed up out of nowhere and started saying the vilest things to me."

An actual expression crossed his face— _revulsion_?—but it was gone so quickly she might have imagined it. "Yes. Rita Skeeter. It was not 'out of nowhere.' She is a beetle Animagus. She can change into a beetle at will," he explained, seeing her confusion.

Tilda nodded after she took a sip of tea. "Yes, the window was left open after an owl came with a red letter. Now that I think of it, one of the girls said that she saw a bug fly in."

"Red letter? Potter's getting Howlers? Erm, Harry," he corrected himself again.

"A Howler! Yes, that's what it was called. It was from his mother-in-law."

Professor Snape winced and did not try to hide it. "Molly. I should have known. So should he."

Tilda looked grimly at the biscuits before her. "It wasn't pleasant."

"It is not supposed to be," he said mildly, biting a biscuit and taking a sip of tea. "If you don't mind my asking—and even if you do—what did he hope to accomplish by bringing you here?" He seemed to have given up on calling Harry by either of his names.

"It was my idea. I wanted to apologise to Ginny and the girls, for one thing. For disrupting their lives. And to Teddy, for not telling him about his father, nor about his being a wizard."

"And did you apologise to Potter?" He'd gone back to using Harry's surname.

"To _Harry_?" she said pointedly.

"Yes," he said, nodding. "For not telling him that he had a son."

She drank her tea, staring into space. "No, not really. Harry didn't ask me to. He wanted me to tell him what happened…" Tilda trailed off, watching Professor Snape, whose face was clouded over. It seemed that _he_ was cross with _her_ , and she could not fathom why.

There was a knock at the door. Without waiting for a reply, Teddy entered, looking relieved when he saw her. "Mum! There you are! I called after you, but I wasn't sure you heard, and then my da—I mean Pot—I mean, erm, _he_ got out a parchment he called a map and somehow he knew that you were down here, so I said I'd come. Are you okay?" he asked anxiously.

Tilda felt her face redden as she remembered what Rita Skeeter had said, all of which Teddy had heard. One reason she'd fled was because he was frightening her with his response, making a freezing wind spring up that seemed intent on sweeping the reporter into something like a miniature tornado. She didn't know what to say, having never been afraid of her own son before. He'd bemused her with his magic, challenging her, though he didn't know it, to find ways of explaining it to both him and others, but he'd never _frightened_ her before.

"I'm—I'm all right," she said in a small voice, certain that she didn't sound at all convincing. He swallowed and scuffed his shoes on the floor, looking ashamed.

"Oh, and I was going to ask you, sir," he said to Professor Snape, looking grateful that he had someone else to talk to and yet disappointed, too. "I was _going_ to ask you whether I could do detention tomorrow, since I didn't know where my mum was, but now I reckon—"

"—that you should tell Clearwater that he can do his detention tomorrow as well," Professor Snape said brusquely. Tilda looked at him, frowning. He gripped the chair's arms very tightly, as though, for some reason, he was having a great deal of trouble keeping himself under control. "I am speaking to your mother now and will see to it that she is returned safely to her home," he said quickly. "Please tell Professors Potter and Weasley that it is being taken care of. You are dismissed, Harrison," he added, as though worried that Teddy would get the impression that he was permitted to continue hanging about in the doorway.

"Can I just tell my mum something?" he said hurriedly. "Mum—I'm sorry I—I got detention already." He reddened. "And for what happened upstairs. If you want me to go with them for the weekend I'll do my best to behave. I promise. Whatever you want," he said contritely.

Tilda watched his face as he spoke. It was so strange to think of her little boy going off to live at boarding school, let alone with another family, another mother, a father he'd never known, little sisters… She forced herself to smile warmly at him, hoping this would keep her from crying. "You don't need to do anything you don't want to do, Teddy. If you don't want to go, you don't have to." She nearly choked on the words but managed to maintain her composure. She couldn't help noticing that, despite his words, Professor Snape seemed somewhat hostile toward her son. If he'd been openly hostile she wouldn't have been so confused, but his words, tone of voice and gestures did not match.

Teddy hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "Thanks, Mum. I reckon I need to think about it. You should have _heard_ Potter, erm, Professor Potter," he amended, one eye on his Potions professor. "The things he _said_ to that Skeeter woman. Professor Weasley had a thing or two to say to her as well," he added.

Tilda didn't know what to say to that and there was a long, uncomfortable silence. He didn't mention the impromptu storm that his own anger had stirred up but instead cleared his throat and said, "So. Okay. Send me an owl when you get home, okay, Mum? Erm, bye." He looked like he might be considering kissing his mother but thought better of it when he glanced at his professor. He closed the door before she could say anything. When she turned to face Professor Snape again he was looking crosser than ever but now his anger seemed to be directed at _her_.

#/#/#

Ginny was relieved to see Teddy emerge from the stairs to the dungeons. She'd been undecided about going after him, since she knew from the map that he would have to go to Snape's office to find his mother, but in the end she thought she'd be the best person to speak to him. Harry had looked miserable about it but Ron had helpfully pointed out that the "talk" they'd had that morning hadn't gone swimmingly.

Ginny tried to smile at Teddy, though her stomach was turning over. It seemed strange suddenly to think of herself as a _stepmother_ , especially to a boy who had been born when she was not quite sixteen. _Stepmothers are supposed to be witches, right?_ she thought ruefully as she walked toward him. Out of the corner of her eye she was aware of Filch swearing under his breath while he mopped the floor. She didn't want to talk in the entrance hall or Great Hall, nor return to the flat. She also didn't want to use the Defence office. This wasn't school business.

"Teddy?" she said uncertainly, his name unfamiliar in her mouth. "May I talk to you?"

He looked around. "Here?" he said, eyeing Filch nervously.

"Erm, no. There are loads of places. Here, let's go up these stairs." She had put her robes on again over her skirt and blouse and she gathered them in her hands to climb the stairs. Teddy followed. When they reached the corridor leading to the hospital wing she turned left and started climbing another curving stair. "This goes to the Astronomy Tower. Let's just sit on the steps. No one will be coming up here until much later. When do you have Astronomy?"

"Thursday night," he said promptly. She sat on the wide part of a wedge-shaped step with her back against the wall and he chose a step two below hers.

"That's good. Not on the weekend. I know that sixth years have it Saturday night and seventh years have it on Sunday but I couldn't remember the rest of the schedule."

His nose wrinkled as he sat. "Saturday and Sunday lessons? Are you joking?"

She laughed. "It's not so bad. Once you get to sixth and seventh years you have fewer lessons, and which ones you have depend on how you did on your OWLs. Of course, at NEWT-level, the work is more difficult…" Ginny saw him gulp and she tried to smile encouragingly at him. "Don't worry now. You've just started. Take each day as it comes. Before you know it, the Hallowe'en Feast will be here, and then the Christmas hols…"

"That doesn't really help," he said, starting to look panicked. She laughed.

"I'm sure you'll do very well." She paused for a moment and looked at her hands. "I just want you to know, I'm not trying to take the place of your mother, nor could I. You have to understand—Harry, well—he's been a bit _thrown_ by all of this. He didn't even know you were _possible_. Please don't judge him by the way he initially reacted. You don't know what he endured when he was young, the scrutiny, the suspicion, the sudden celebrity after a life of obscurity and not even knowing that he was a wizard himself…"

Teddy perked up at that. "He didn't know either?"

"No. Not until he got his Hogwarts letter. Except that he wasn't as lucky as you."

Teddy frowned again. "How am I lucky?"

She patted his shoulder. "You're lucky to have your mum. You grew up wanted and loved. Harry never knew that." She told him about his parents being murdered, which Teddy said he'd heard about, but he hadn't heard about the things that didn't end up in the history books, about the Dursleys, about Dudley's gang, about living in a cupboard under the stairs for ten years and being blamed for transgressions for which he couldn't possibly (he thought) be responsible.

"Your mum could tell you a little about Harry's childhood, since she used to be his teacher," she added. He immediately looked appalled and Ginny worried that she'd made a huge mistake.

"That's right—he told me this morning that she was his teacher," Teddy said, shaking his head and looking a bit green. "I'd rather not think about that. I mean, teachers aren't—aren't supposed to—" He looked like he was thinking about it anyway.

Ginny bit her lip. "Well, anyway," she went on, feeling like an idiot for bringing it up, "I was wondering—would you like to try coming to stay with us _next_ weekend? I think that this weekend it might be better for you to stay at school, since you're still adjusting. But perhaps—?"

She looked at him hopefully. When he didn't answer, she barrelled on. "It's not the usual thing, to allow a first year to leave the castle, but the headmistress is actually the one who suggested it to Harry, as this is an unusual situation. It's also part of her ongoing attempt, I think, to get the students to forget that we're married to each other. She likes that we spend a lot of our weekends at home, so there's less of a chance that students will actually see us together, behaving like a _family_." She rolled her eyes. "Personally, I think she's still a bit soft-hearted when it comes to Harry. When he was a first year she engineered his getting onto the house team and having his own broom even though first years aren't usually allowed to have brooms."

He still had not responded, so Ginny babbled on. "We have a guest room, so you'd have your own space. And we could get you a bicycle, so you could go riding with us. Do you like tennis?" she added hopefully, feeling like she was grasping at straws. "And then there's Barnard Castle. It's very nice…" she trailed off, feeling like a fool.

His arms were wrapped around his legs as though he was imitating her, but he didn't speak. Ginny couldn't tell what his expression might mean. He stared at the stone wall, occasionally blinking but revealing nothing. She swallowed, unnerved by his silence. "Do you—do you think you could consider forgiving him? For—for being human?"

Teddy looked up at her and she was relieved to see that he wasn't cross. "I reckon that sounds all right," he said quietly. "I mean—coming to visit." She realised that he was finding the idea of their Durham house appealing but was also trying to still have his pride. She gave him a small smile. He looked so much like Harry and yet was so different.

"And forgiving him?" she prodded softly.

He turned to face the wall again. "Have _you_ forgiven him?" he asked.

"There was nothing to forgive. We weren't together yet, we were still just friends." She started to say, _And he doesn't remember, he wasn't acting with free will,_ but she didn't want to bring up the issue of how Teddy was conceived. "And—and I have some experience myself with being possessed by Voldemort," she said instead. "I couldn't possibly judge. I _know_."

"Really?" he said, turning to her with his eyes wide. "You?"

She nodded. "I was your age. Terrible things happened, people could have died, including me, including your father. Thanks to Harry it turned out all right." She looked at her hands again. "I was mortified when I realised what he'd done. Because of me he had to kill a basilisk—"

"A _what_?"

"A large enchanted snake. You die if you look into its eyes. He used the sword in the office."

"The one in the case."

"Right. _He_ did that. When he was twelve. He risked his life for me." She laughed ruefully. "I'd already fancied him for nearly two years. That wasn't likely to make me stop."

"When did you marry him?" he finally asked very quietly, not looking at her.

"Nine years ago. The girls were born the next year."

He looked at her. "What should I call you?"

Ginny gave him a smile and said, "What about my name? Just call me Ginny if we're in Durham or the flat, or even if no other teachers or students are around, besides your father. Otherwise, here at school you should probably continue to call me Professor Weasley."

"Okay," he said, looking uncertain about this. "And, erm, what should I call _him_?"

Ginny didn't need to ask who _him_ was. She sighed deeply. "I'm not really sure. The twins call him _Dad_ , of course. I call him Harry at home and Professor Potter when we're around other students, but Harry again around other teachers only. What do you think you'd like to call him?" She couldn't stop herself from smirking. "Other than 'pillock'?"

He laughed for a moment. "Erm, no, I don't think I should probably call him that. He's got a mouth when he wants to though, yeah? He got some good ones off at that Skeeter woman." Teddy grinned at her with a guilty light in his eye and Ginny grinned back, feeling her heart skip a beat when their eyes met, remembering the many times she and Harry had silently shared a good laugh when they were in school, even before they were a couple. "I think it should _probably_ be either _Harry_ or _Dad_ ," Teddy went on, clearly not affected in the same way she was, "but I'm not sure I'm ready for _Dad_ yet."

She blinked and took a deep breath, collecting herself. Nodding, she said, "He might not be ready for that either. All right, then. Let's go with _Harry_. Unless you're with other students and teachers—then it's Professor Potter, of course."

He nodded in agreement. "Of course," he echoed.

They were both silent for a while. At length Ginny said, "I can tell you anything you want to know about Harry, within reason, but I don't really know much about you. Where do you live? What's it like?" She decided not to push the forgiveness issue further for the moment.

"Latere Farm," he said promptly, going on to describe his house, the stables, the horses. He made her laugh when he told her about Dorothy's hair-dying experiments on the horse's manes and tails. He also told her about his aunts, and his cousin Jimmy, plus his slightly dodgy uncle. He told her about pranks he and Jimmy had played on Beatrice, the housekeeper, and about he and his mum going to Brighton in the summer to visit her friends, relax at the seaside, and have fun on the pier. He talked about the two trips they'd taken to Australia to visit his grandmother, how he hated long flights, and the way his mother was so tense every moment that she was in _her_ mother's presence, even though his Aunt Audrey said that his mum and grandmother had "made up" years ago.

He was funny and compassionate and sly and likable, and as she listened to him and watched him, leaning her cheek on her knee, she felt a longing for a son— _Harry's son_ —well up in her so strongly again that she had to close her eyes. It had become almost a physical _ache_. But she pretended that she was all right and opened her eyes again, watching him, listening to him, and thinking all the while that Tilda Harrison was the luckiest woman on earth.

#/#/#

"May I ask what you are doing?"

Frowning, Tilda replied, "Excuse me?"

"Telling him that he need not visit his father."

She dropped her jaw at Professor Snape's audacity. "I am raising my son as I see fit."

"You are permitting him to run away—not that you're much of an example—and you are robbing his father of his child— _again_. You are also taking his sisters from him and their brother from them. You are being childish and selfish." His voice was very hard. She was not accustomed to someone who did not know her well speaking to her in this manner. Even people she knew well didn't speak to her like this, except for her mother. _Mum would probably say what he just said,_ she thought, then pushed this out of her head. She didn't want to think about her mum.

"If you don't mind my saying so—and even if you _do_ , it is none of your bloody business."

To her surprise, he nodded. "True. But that has never stopped me from stating my opinion."

She put her cup and saucer on the desk with a clatter and stood, fuming. "The day that you become a parent you can scold me about how to raise mine, but until then—"

He also stood, leaning on the desk and saying in a low growl, "I have been a father for nearly six years but I have only seen my son for about one hundred days per year—roughly half of the weekends and portions of my Christmas, Easter and summer holidays. But even though his mother did not deign to marry me at least she did not hide my son's existence from me nor prevent my seeing him." Professor Snape's dark, deep-set eyes burned into hers and she had to look away guiltily.

Tilda swallowed and after a minute she replied, "I didn't know," very quietly.

He nodded and sat again. "Few do," he acknowledged, his voice having lost the angry edge. She also sat again, feeling a sympathy toward him she had not expected.

"Do you—do you have any pictures?" she ventured, trying to repair whatever had been shattered by the hostile exchange. She couldn't explain even to herself why she thought he might be an ally but she had a strange feeling that he was, despite his accusatory words. He stared silently at his hands for so long that she thought he hadn't heard what she'd said. She was startled when he abruptly opened a desk drawer and withdrew a small photo album. She looked at him. "Did you want to marry his mother?" She didn't ask if he minded her nosiness.

"That is usually what a proposal of marriage means," he said calmly, taking another sip of tea.

She opened the album, seeing a photograph of a much younger woman than she expected holding a blanket-wrapped bundle while sitting in a hospital bed. Despite the damp curls about her face, the woman was quite beautiful, though clearly exhausted. _I wish I'd looked like that after giving birth_ , Tilda thought. She had no photos of herself after Teddy's birth. There was no one to take them. Uncle Horace had had a heart attack two days earlier and was still in hospital.

Under the photo of the mother of Professor Snape's son, someone had written _Penelope and Julian, 21 December, 2002, St Michael's Hospital, London_. She turned the page and saw a small freckled boy with reddish-brown hair perched on the edge of the hospital bed, looking a little uncertain about the blanket-wrapped bundle in his mother's arms. _Penelope, Nate and Julian_ , the legend for this photograph read. "I thought you only had one son," she said, frowning.

"I do. That is his older brother, Nate Clearwater. He and your son have evidently become friends. It was in defending Theodore that Nate earned _his_ detention. For some reason he does not realise how transparent his lies are. Fortunately, I am accustomed to seeing through them." Professor Snape seemed determined to return to his detached demeanour. He might have been discussing strangers whose pictures were in a newspaper.

"She was married before?" Tilda pressed, turning the pages of the album, seeing the baby grow into a toddler, then a small boy, sometimes alone and sometimes with his mother or brother. Julian seemed very serious, but given who his father was, that did not strike her as odd, merely unfortunate. There were no photographs of his father.

"No," he said tersely, selecting another biscuit. "Clearwater is the name with which she was born."

Tilda was surprised. "Two kids and no husband either time?" She looked at Penelope's beautiful face as she hugged her boys to her chest, brown eyes twinkling. "She must be better able to withstand criticism than I am."

He shrugged. "She lives in London, not out in the country, and she works with single mothers. She rarely has to deal with the sort of provincialism you have obviously encountered."

"And her boys know about their fathers," she added, feeling envious again as she turned the page and saw a photograph of Penelope flying kites with the boys in a park. She did not know whether this was true but she assumed that if it wasn't Professor Snape would let her know. He did not seem capable of not correcting her if she got anything wrong. As a teacher, she recognised this instinct.

But when she looked up she saw him open his mouth and shut it abruptly again, as though he'd changed his mind about saying something. From the way his jaw was clenched it seemed to be quite an effort for him to refrain from commenting. Though she'd thought him rather rude at times, she regretted his self-restraint now. _I wonder what he's not saying_? she thought, trying to make it seem that she wasn't watching him as she selected a biscuit from the tray. Doing that, however, allowed her to catch a glimpse of her watch. "Oh, bloody hell. I really should be getting back. I have a new stable tenant coming this evening." She rolled her eyes. "Another spoiled little brat who's been begging for a horse, and her parents couldn't bear to deny her."

His eyebrows flew up. "If memory serves, your son has a horse," he reminded her.

She grimaced. "Yes, but not because he begged and made a pest of himself. He never asked for her at all, in fact. My great-uncle wanted to give him a gift before he died."

"Which is different, of course. No one shall ever call _your_ son a spoiled brat," he said quietly, putting down his cup and saucer. She bristled instinctively, saw the sly look that told her he _wanted_ her to respond with a knee-jerk defence, and bit back her words.

"He's _not_ a spoiled brat," she said as evenly as possible, hating a small tremor in her voice.

"I never said otherwise," Professor Snape responded smoothly. Tilda was finding it difficult not to seethe. She understood what had so infuriated Harry when he'd been in school.

"So," she said, standing, "I'd appreciate it if you could get me home as quickly as possible. I came here, it turned out to be a huge mistake, and I'd like to go home, thank you very much."

He nodded and stood. With a wave of his hand the tea things vanished into thin air. He started to move toward the door to his office, but although she stood she didn't follow. "I hope you don't plan to take me home looking like _that_ ," she said, nodding at his black robes, which he wore over a shirt and trousers that were also black.

He looked down at himself, then back at her. "My attire is problematic? I assure you, I had planned to transfigure my robes before we were in sight of any Muggles. I will appear to be wearing a black _jacket_. Would _that_ suit you?" he asked drily.

She snorted. "As if I haven't got enough trouble at home without looking like I've been out with a priest or an _avant garde_ artist. Can't you at least wear something _not_ black? Grey tweed perhaps?" He looked at her for a long minute and she thought it likely that he was going to be cross again, but his expression was impossible to read. He finally shrugged his shoulders, took out his wand, and a moment later he was wearing an impeccable herringbone tweed jacket. As long as she'd got him this far, she nodded and said, "The shirt, also. Still too clerical."

He grimaced, but a moment later he was wearing a cream-coloured jumper. "I draw the line at jodhpurs and riding boots," he grumbled, walking past her. She grinned behind his back.

"I'm asking you to take me to my farm, not to give riding lessons." As she followed him into the corridor she asked, "Oh, wait a minute. How are we getting there? When we went shopping we took the train to London, but when Harry brought me here it was on the Knight Bus. I thought I'd go mad on that thing. What are we going to do instead?"

He froze, his shoulders very straight and stiff. When he turned he looked like it was a great effort to remain civil. "Instead?"

"I'd _really_ rather not ride the bus again," she said. He didn't say anything but simply stared into space for what seemed a long time. "So," she said at length, "what's the plan?"

He fixed her with a gimlet eye. "I do not know, Miss Harrison, since you do not wish to take the bus. If the bus is not to your taste we certainly cannot use the Floo network, which is far worse, in my opinion. You cannot fly a broom and an unauthorised Portkey is out of the question except in emergencies. You seem determined to make this difficult."

She put her hands on her hips. " _I'm_ making this difficult? Is it my fault that damn bus is possessed? You must be mad if you think I'm going to set foot on that thing again."

He shrugged. "In that case, we could fly on Thestrals."

She backed up from him. "Oh, no you don't. Harry told me about _them_. I am having nothing to do with those things." She looked at him shrewdly. If she didn't know better she could have sworn that his eyes were twinkling with merriment and the corner of his mouth was trying—and yet not trying—to turn up. She fumed. _He's got me cornered,_ she thought with annoyance. "We've got to take the damn bus, don't we?" she finally said, clenching her teeth.

"Only if you would like to return this evening," he said, maddeningly calm. He turned and walked toward the steps. Sighing deeply, Tilda followed, her stomach already clenching in apprehension as she anticipated the ride home.

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	29. Impromptu Visitors

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 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Twenty-Nine**

 **Impromptu Visitors**

 **#/#/#**

Severus reached up to take Miss Harrison's hand as she shakily disembarked from the Knight Bus. She pushed her dishevelled hair behind her ears as she took each step, grasping his hand painfully. They had bounced from Hogsmeade to Aberdeen to London to Bath to London again to Glasgow to London yet again and then to Cambridge before arriving at her farm. Each time they made a jump she clung to his arm and checked her watch, fretting that she would be late.

The conductor and other passengers had looked suspiciously at them. The conductor was a Hogwarts student about half a dozen years earlier, while the driver was thirtyish and the conductor before him. Each time the conductor rapped on the glass and called out, "Next stop Bath, Stan, or, "Next stop Glasgow," he watched Miss Harrison and Severus intently. He gawped when they boarded the bus but took the fare for them without comment. Severus couldn't remember his name but _Dennis_ was embroidered on his shirt, over his heart. As Severus helped Miss Harrison down the steps _Dennis_ finally spoke to him.

" _Oi,_ Professor Snape! Why aren't you at Hogwarts?"

He looked up at the young man, saying, "I am not at Hogwarts because I have been riding the Knight Bus. Good evening." He had no intention of explaining himself to a former student whose pinnacle of achievement to date was that he could punch holes in bus tickets, tell the bus driver where to go next, and make correct change three times out of five. He didn't know whether _Dennis_ was any good at making the hot chocolate he offered to everyone because no one took him up on it.

Dennis seemed to accept this response, looking very nervous and causing Severus to remember a particularly small, trembling boy standing before a melted cauldron with tears rolling down his face. Severus was very glad that no one had asked for hot chocolate as he strongly suspected the result would have been disastrous. _Well,_ he thought, _now you see why you should have applied yourself more to your Potions work._

When the bus had disappeared from sight again he nodded at Miss Harrison and said, "Good evening," as dismissively as he had to the bus conductor. He had done his best to display forbearance during their ride, tolerating her grasping onto him constantly, but now that they had arrived he felt that he had been pushed to the limit. He wanted to return to the castle, where a hot dinner and a quiet evening of marking essays awaited him.

However, before he had taken his wand out of his pocket, Miss Harrison said, "That's it? You're leaving? Not even walking me to my house?"

He looked at her as though she was mad, but the meaning behind his expression did not seem to penetrate her oblivion. "Walking you to your house?"

She nodded at the shadowy tunnel of trees where the bus had left them. "It's right this way. And then, well, have you had your tea yet?"

He hesitated before falling into step beside her, his hands behind his back. "I was going to eat my evening meal upon returning to the castle," he told her, his jaw clenched. "And there are essays I must mark. You saw them on my desk earlier."

She laughed. "You know, I'd forgotten that part of teaching. You don't really leave it behind in the evening, do you? The children don't understand that. It's like you only exist for them when they walk into the classroom. They never see their teachers hunched over their desks reading essay after essay, or working on lesson plans. They have no idea, do they? That teachers don't cease to exist after the last bell rings? Of course, maybe they do at a boarding school."

"You would think that would be true," he said heavily as they continued to walk, "but I find that even Hogwarts students are amazingly obtuse about this. I have caught students out of their dormitories at night, attempting to break into my office to steal contraband potions ingredients, and they are frequently _shocked_ that I am at my desk, marking their work."

"I know," she said, shaking her head in amazement. "When I occasionally ran into pupils in the shops you'd think I'd grown another head, they were so surprised to see me." They walked in silence for a few minutes and the house soon hove into view at the end of the arboreal tunnel. "This may sound odd, but I rather miss it," she said quietly.

"Your home? But it is right there."

She turned to look at him, shaking her head. "No. Teaching. It's been about twelve years and I still miss it dreadfully." She looked at the house again. "Every time I went to Teddy's school to meet with his teachers or the head I sort of _inhaled_ it, you know? The smell of a _school_. More than any place I've ever lived, schools feel like _home_ to me," she said even more softly.

He clenched his jaw, suddenly quite uncomfortable. "I am afraid that I cannot say the same," he said stiffly. "I never intended to be a teacher but I am ill-equipped now to do anything else. I believe your new tenants are waiting for you," he said, switching subjects abruptly. At the entrance to the stable-yard a couple in their forties waited with a little blonde girl and a trailer with a chestnut-coloured horse.

Miss Harrison smiled at the couple and waved to them. They nodded and waved back. "I'll be right there," she called. Turning to Severus, she said, "Thank you. For—a lot of things. Do at least let me give you your tea. I'm rubbish as a cook, but Beatrice is wonderful. I'm sure she's made something marvellous. It's the least I can do."

 _No,_ he thought, _the least you could do is to leave me out of this._ He wanted to say it, and nearly did, but something about her expression stopped him. Suddenly he had a very strong memory of seeing her in Surrey, twelve years before, and he froze, unable to decide how to respond. She took his silence for acquiescence.

"Good! It's settled. Beatrice will let you in. You can relax by the fire while you wait. I know it's only early September, but the nights start getting a little chilly here in late August and we've already taken to lighting the fire in the evenings." Once again she didn't wait for a response but turned away from him and walked to the stable-yard with a bounce in her step, swinging her arms.

He looked at the house, remembering the last time he'd been in it, to take young Harrison shopping for his Hogwarts things. When the housekeeper answered the door, she nodded in recognition. "Hullo, then! What're you doing here? Aren't you from Teddy's school?"

"I am. Miss Harrison came to the school for a meeting about—about her son, and I have brought her home. She has invited me to stay to tea, if that isn't an imposition," he said formally, entering the front hall when she waved him in.

"Oh, no problem. It's been no time since Teddy's left for school and I don't have the knack for making less food yet, so it's good there's someone else to eat it. But you have to promise to have the same appetite as an eleven-year-old boy," she joked. "May I take your jacket?" She nodded at his transfigured robes. He hesitated for a moment before removing it, discreetly slipping his wand from the pocket as he did so and sliding it into the sleeve of his jumper. She didn't notice anything. After he handed it to her, rather than hanging it on a peg with the other things in the hall, she went to a cupboard under the stairs and put it on a hanger. He remembered to duck when going through the doorway to the sitting room, which was as untidy as ever, and he again chose the horsehair couch. The cat was once more napping on the hearthrug and Severus found himself wondering whether the animal had moved from that position since August. His train of thought was interrupted by the housekeeper appearing in the doorway, saying, "Teddy's all right?"

He frowned at her. "Pardon me?"

"Teddy. You said his mum came to the school for a meeting." She sighed deeply. "Poor Tilda. She's had so many meetings with the head at the village school here. Nothing wrong, I hope?"

He nodded. "Everything is fine. The meeting was not about anything Theodore has done," he said truthfully. "Nothing to worry about," he added, hoping she would leave it alone, but he didn't make an effort to sound particularly upbeat. He never did. On the other hand, he wasn't completely convinced that there was nothing to worry about. If Carlisle continued to set Harrison off, he would—quite justifiably—be undergoing more disciplinary measures. And if Rita Skeeter wrote more articles, the other students were likely to get wind of it in no time.

The housekeeper looked sceptical, her mouth twisting as she said, "If you say so. I'll go check on the food. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding suit you?"

He nodded, sitting up stiffly. "Yes. Thank you." As he watched her go, he thought, _And if it didn't suit me, what then? Would you be shocked if I transfigured it into something I wanted to eat?_ He couldn't do that in front of the housekeeper without breaking the law but that didn't mean that he wasn't sometimes tempted. Listening to her bustling around the kitchen on the other side of the hall, he still wasn't certain why he hadn't already Disapparated back to Hogsmeade. Part of him was curious and detached, as though observing someone whose skin he happened to be wearing.

 _I need to eat_ , he thought irritably. _What difference does it make if I do it here or at Hogwarts?_ But he knew that part of the reason for his staying was that he was curious about the mother of Harry Potter's son. _What sort of woman is she? What drew her to a sixteen-year-old boy, particularly Potter?_ He'd never understood what made people want to be near the great _Harry Potter_ , besides his celebrity, of which she had been utterly unaware. He'd never understood James Potter's popularity, either.

"There you are!" Miss Harrison said, standing in the doorway of the sitting room and looking pleased with herself. "Beatrice should have everything ready in a trice. I hope you don't mind eating in the kitchen. We don't stand on ceremony around here, generally."

"Your meeting went well, I take it?" he said, standing and following her into the hall, bringing his head low to avoid the lintel at the last possible moment.

"Very well. They've signed a lease for _two years_. And it's a very sweet horse, a docile chestnut mare. Shouldn't give Dorothy any trouble."

She hung her jacket on a peg in the hall and entered the kitchen, going to a dresser with some old mismatched china and a few bottles of wine. After selecting a bottle, she handed it to him with a small silver gadget. "Would you like to do the honours?"

He frowned at the bottle and mysterious gadget, raising one eyebrow. She once again completely misunderstood. "Oh, I'm sorry. Do you not drink wine?"

He closed his eyes for a moment, forcing himself to hold his tongue. When he had collected himself, he said stiffly, "I drink wine. I am, however, not accustomed to using this to access it."

She laughed. "Well, what do you use?" she said quickly, before freezing and nodding. "Oh—right. I see." Laughing again, she said, "I'm not used to this. I'm sure that after seven years—"

"The food seems to be ready," he said quietly, cutting her off. The housekeeper had been letting the roast rest on a carving board but now was bringing it, partially sliced, to the long table. He noticed for the first time that it was set for two, not three.

Miss Harrison opened the wine while the housekeeper carried the vegetables to the table. Then she took off the apron she'd been wearing and went to the hall, where she donned a lightweight jacket as she spoke through the doorway. "Well, I'll be off then. Don't worry about the clearing up. I'll tackle it in the morning. If you could just soak the roasting pan, though, I'd appreciate it."

"Of course, Beatrice. Thanks! See you tomorrow morning."

When she had gone Severus accepted a glass of wine from Miss Harrison and sat at the table. "She's never lived in?"

"No, she has her own family in the village to care for. She's going to do _their_ tea now."

He hadn't expected them to be alone and felt distinctly uncomfortable but had no plausible excuse for making an escape. There was silence while she dished up the food for them, then just the scraping of their utensils on the plates, chewing, and swallowing. At length, she looked up and said, "I'm sorry that it's such a burden to eat with me. I won't make the mistake of inviting you again."

Her voice sounded thick, as though she was trying not to cry, and he felt instinctively annoyed by the guilty reaction this induced in him. "It is not a burden to eat with you. I am, however, at something of a loss for topics of conversation that do not include warning you that your son needs to keep a better grip on his temper. Or the issue of how your son came to be at all. I am also unaccustomed to being around any Muggle who is permitted to know that I am a wizard, about the wizarding world, or about magic in general. If you would like to suggest a topic of conversation, I will attempt to be a good guest and join in," he said pointedly, reminding her that she hadn't been speaking either, until she accused him of thinking it a burden to eat with her.

"I'm sorry," she said again, truly sounding like she was this time. "I don't know how to do this. With rare exceptions, for the last eleven years it's been just—"

"—you and your son. You have not adjusted to his absence." He nodded and took a sip of wine.

"Yes. And why do you think I wouldn't want to talk about him? What's this about his temper? I thought that would stop when he went to magic school."

"He is allowing himself to be provoked. He must learn self-control."

She nodded. "Because everyone wants to know why he's _possible_ ," she said with a sigh. She looked at him shrewdly and he hoped that he had arranged his features into an innocuous, disinterested expression. "Including you, I suppose."

He was loath to admit this. "Of course not. That is a private matter."

"A private matter you'd like to know more about," she prodded. He looked away.

"The most mysterious thing, for my part, is how your memory of that time happens to be intact when I put a memory charm on you myself."

Miss Harrison was silent again, having turned bright red. To occupy herself she was noisily cutting her meat, looking quite guilty. _Why should that be?_ he wondered.

They continued eating in silence. She never responded to his comment about the memory charm but did finally manage to bring up another topic, that of the Hogwarts curriculum. The housekeeper had prepared a fruit tart but after the tart and the curriculum conversation had dwindled to nothing Severus rose to go, saying, "Thank you for the meal, Miss Harrison. I—"

"Miss Harrison?" She looked perplexed. "Is it possible that you haven't called me by name all evening? For heaven's sake, you'd think by now you could call me Tilda. And what should I call you?"

 _You should call me Professor Snape,_ he thought. But he said reluctantly, "Severus."

She frowned. "What?" He repeated it. From her expression he could tell that she wished that she hadn't asked. After clearing her throat, she said, "Well then, _Severus_ , thank you for helping me earlier and for staying to tea. I hope that—" Suddenly a large owl came flying through the open kitchen window, alighting on the chair next to Tilda. She looked quizzically at Severus before taking the parchment from the bird's talon and unrolling it.

" _Dear Mum,_ " she read, " _You didn't send me an owl when you got home. I've talked to Ginny and I'm going to visit them in Durham next weekend. Once we see how that goes I might visit every other weekend, if it's all right with you. Ginny wants to have you come visit as well, perhaps at Christmas. Say hi to Minnie, Mickey, Beatrice and Dorothy for me. Love, Teddy._ "

She swallowed. "Have me visit?" she whispered, staring at the letter. The owl landed on the remains of the roast beef and she shrank back. "Help! Will it carry off a roast?"

Looking around nervously, Severus pulled out his wand and banished the owl, which flew precipitously out the window, backwards. Then he waved his hand at the remaining food and the dishes. The food leapt across the room and into the fridge while the dirty dishes flew into the sink and began washing themselves. Tilda stared with wide eyes.

"Erm, that's not necessary. Beatrice said she'd do the washing up," she said with a shaking voice. He closed his eyes and a moment later the dishes were simply sitting motionless in the sink. He opened his eyes again and saw that she was gazing at him in awe. "I don't think I've actually seen much, well, magic that can be used on a daily basis. Is that what witches and wizards usually do after eating?"

"I cannot answer for every witch or wizard. That is what _I_ do if I am not at the school." He slid his wand into the sleeve of his jumper.

"When you and the boys are on holiday?" she asked. "Where do you go?"

He sighed. He was still not getting away quickly, that much was clear. "For the last few years we have gone to the Isle of Wight. I have a cottage. And no, I have never done that when they were with me because they were not to know that I was a wizard. I only do that when I am alone."

She leaned against the table. "So how do you handle Christmas? Will I need to bribe Teddy to come home? He already sounds like he's expecting to spend Christmas _there_." Her voice sounded thick again with impending tears. He thought longingly of his office, a fire in the grate, the satisfaction of giving atrocious essays the marks they deserved…

"So? How do you do it?" she asked again.

"Hm?" he said, looking up suddenly, having forgotten the question.

"Christmas. Do you take the boys to the Isle of Wight? You see Julian at Christmas, you said."

"No, we only go to the cottage during the summer holidays. For Christmas I go to London and stay with the boys and their mother. I sleep on the couch."

Tilda made a face. "That's a bit awkward, isn't it? Since you asked her to marry you."

"No," he lied, "it is not awkward." _But,_ he thought _, this conversation is. Thank you again for bringing up the fact that I asked her to marry me. I do enjoy humiliation and embarrassment so much._

"Well, I reckon you get on better than most parents who have to raise kids without being married to each other. So, are you going to tell me again that because Harry's been deprived of Teddy for eleven years I should give him up for Christmas?" she said, a peevish note in her voice.

He felt the wine buzzing in his head and thought, _No, I do understand wanting to be with your son for Christmas._ He had a sudden, very clear memory of Penelope when she turned down his proposal, tears streaming down her face. He remembered wondering whether her declining to be his wife meant that he would never see his son again.

"I may have an idea," he said. "Perhaps you can spend Christmas at Hogwarts. The Potters can also stay at the castle. And the boys can be together as well—Theodore and Julian's older brother, Nate. Then you needn't be a guest in the Potters' home just to see your son for the holiday."

She looked at him in surprise. "That's not a bad idea, actually. And I could meet Julian's mother. She would come, yeah? After all, she's also the mother of Teddy's friend. I'm not very used to this, since the only other friend Teddy's had is his own cousin, but I know that most parents want to meet the parents of their kids' friends. I'd like to meet her."

 _Was it the wine_? he wondered. _What made me suggest that? And how am I going to get Penelope to come to Hogwarts_?

"Yes, erm, as I said, it is just an idea. If Penelope does not want to change the Christmas routine, or if the Potters insist upon going to their home—or possibly to Harry's in-laws' home—"

"Oh, yes, I know. There may be complications. But we have almost four months to work them out." She smiled, looking genuinely happy. He gave her a small smile in return, once again wondering whether it was the wine.

He was finally able to take his leave. Drawing his wand from the sleeve of his jumper he Apparated from her kitchen to the edge of Hogsmeade, patting himself cautiously, but it seemed that he hadn't Splinched himself. Then he realised that he'd left his robes, still appearing to be a tweed jacket, in the cupboard under the stairs at Latere Farm. Luckily, the jumper would keep him warm enough on the walk back to the castle.

When he reached the great doors, he pushed them open and looked around the entrance hall, but it was quite deserted. His office was as he'd left it, though it felt for some reason as though he'd been away for years. He settled down for a few hours of marking essays and only noticed, when he was preparing for bed, that he hadn't bothered to transfigure his shirt again. Severus placed it in the hamper with his other dirty clothes but still did not bother returning it to its true form. So the jumper sat, a fluffy ivory-coloured pile of wool atop the unmitigated black of his shirts, trousers and robes, like a dollop of cream floating on top of otherwise dark and bitter tea.

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The wizard looked up at the large house before him. As English country houses went it was rather stark, like an old, small castle built by people more intent on security than making an impression, though it sat in a beautifully-landscaped park. He knew what most people in Wiltshire did not: that the most esoteric collection of Dark Arts books in the country resided within, hidden in a secret chamber reached by going through a passage beneath the drawing room floor. He didn't know whether one of the books held the information he needed, but he didn't have anywhere else to look, so he had to take a chance. He had been over three months coming up with his plan, but now that he had done so he had something rather valuable with which to bargain.

He rang the doorbell. As he waited he fingered the holly and evergreen wreath that decorated the large black-painted door. Despite the nod to the holiday, he knew that the staff would be disconcerted, since anyone invited to the house would normally Apparate into the entrance hall. Muggle-repelling charms kept most other people in the county at a distance. When the door opened, the hinges creaked noisily, crying out from long disuse. He frowned at first, seeing no one, before looking down and finding a house elf wearing what appeared to be a very small boy's sailor suit, complete with a boater. Holes had been cut in the hat to accommodate the elf's large, flapping ears. It also wore knee-high socks and black patent leather shoes with a strap across the instep. It looked, the wizard thought, ridiculous.

"Is the lady of the house at home?" he enquired with a slight bow, as though the elf was a butler.

"Who is asking?" squeaked the elf, his small mushroom-like nose twitching.

"Who in Merlin's name are _you_?" came an imperious voice from within the entrance hall. A tall, handsome, but annoyed witch strode toward the door, shooing her elf out of the way.

He gave her a lopsided smile that was meant to be charming, looking her up and down in a way he could tell she didn't like, but he thought, _Not bad for a bird of her age_. _She always did seem like one who would be well-preserved._

"I said, who are—"

"I went to school with your son," he interrupted her. "I have a favour to ask of you."

She crossed her arms and snorted. "A _favour_? You must be joking. I do not plan to—"

"—live with your son again, evidently," he finished for her, though he could tell that that wasn't how she'd intended to conclude the sentence.

Another derisive laugh. "Oh, I suppose you're planning to break him out of Azkaban? And you still haven't said who you are. Or what this favour is."

"Blaise Zabini." He waited to see whether she would mention knowing Blaise Zabini the elder, but she did not. "We can get to the favour later. But yes, Mrs Malfoy, I intend to free your son from Azkaban fortress."

Narcissa Malfoy surveyed him with bloodshot eyes. He could tell that she'd been drinking, and therefore drinking alone. He didn't blame her. It was unlikely that _he_ would be able to withstand the forced jollity of Christmas as a middle-aged widow with a reputation for skirting the law and a son in prison without imbibing more than a little.

"You're going to get my son out of prison? How?" She seemed to be making an effort not to slur her words and was largely succeeding. He began to suspect that this would be easier than he'd previously thought. "Or, I might ask— _why_ you are interested in breaking him out of prison after ten years?"

Blaise smiled as charmingly as he could and gestured toward the archway that led to the drawing room. "I'd be happy to explain, but could we sit? I'm afraid this may take a little while." She raised an eyebrow and turned on her heel, leading him wordlessly. Her robes were cinched at the waist and he smiled as he followed her, eyes fixed on her bum. It was still rather nice, especially for a woman going on fifty. He didn't mind the view at all.

They sat on a couch near the hearth and Blaise turned to her, wondering whether she would move away, due to his having sat beside her, rather than on the opposite couch. "You'd like to know what's in it for me?" he asked her. She gave no response apart from raising that one eyebrow another fraction of an inch. "I'll tell you—what's in it for me is power without the responsibility to be a figurehead. That's your son's role, I hope. There's power to go with that too, of course. But now he's got none of the power and I don't have enough. Or rather, I need more information. That's where you come in."

"Information? What information would I have about making my son the new Dark Lord? That _is_ what you are saying you intend to do?" she asked.

"Yes. That is my intention. I've thought about it rather idly for years, but a few months ago a newspaper headline made me remember something about a spell Draco told my—er, told _me_ about, and I've been looking—fruitlessly—for a book with that spell ever since. I've come to the conclusion that the book must be _here_."

She snorted. "A book? That's why you're here?" She swept her hand around the room. "As you can see from the empty shelves, I've sold the books. Even if Draco once read something in a book here I doubt that it is here still."

"You sold _all_ of the books? Even the ones under your drawing room floor?" He eyed the Persian carpet in the centre of the room. Most other decoration had been stripped from the chamber but the carpet had the air of an afterthought, a refugee remaining after the rest of the population had fled. Dust lay thick on the mantel and dark rectangles on the painted panelling showed where art had once hung. The flat winter light entering through tall, curtainless windows made the room seem even more forlorn.

She stood, her fingers fumbling nervously at her robes. "Who sent you? I have _no contraband_ , nothing." Her voice shook.

He tried to turn on the charm again. "Mrs Malfoy, I am not here to entrap you. The things Draco told me about are too dangerous to sell," he said, nodding at the floor. "The Ministry watches those who might be interested in buying them. I have not been able to find what I need to know elsewhere. If you'd like your son to be the next great Dark Lord—and to share in his power—all you need do is let me see the remaining books in your possession." He smiled, waiting for a response. He wasn't above using Imperius but he preferred her to help him of her own accord. Many wizards were capable of overcoming Imperius, given enough time. He wanted her to be willing and fully participatory. He sensed her neediness, on many levels, and knew that his _responsiveness_ would also appeal to her on many levels.

She sat again, her features more relaxed, but in a defeated way, not as though she were comfortable and at ease. "Before you see a single thing I want to know—how will you do it?"

"Well, that's assuming that I find what I am looking for."

"Yes, yes, I understand that," she said impatiently, her eyes darting around restlessly. "And if you please, what was the headline that jogged your memory?"

He smiled and leaned forward, his forearms on his knees. "Harry Potter had a son when he was only sixteen. With a Muggle woman who used to be his teacher."

She snorted. " _That's_ it? I read _that_ , and it did not say to me, 'Oh, now my son can be the next Dark Lord.' How will that give Draco the power he needs?"

He was unmoved by her scorn. "It won't. Draco spoke once of a spell that his father threatened him with: a spell to absorb the power of a magical child. He threatened Draco with it when he displeased him, but Draco said that they were idle threats, that his father was bluffing."

Narcissa snorted again. "He also knew that I'd have killed his father if he touched a hair on Draco's head." Then she froze and clamped her mouth shut, making Blaise wonder whether she wished that _she_ had been the one to kill Lucius Malfoy.

"Yes, well, Draco said that his father planned to use the spell on _Potter_ so that the Dark Lord could kill him. His father finally showed him the book with the spell and its theory—he didn't think it safe to entrust this to Draco when he was younger. Lucius cast the spell on Potter at the Ministry—and then, when it didn't work and Potter still had his powers—"

"—the Dark Lord killed Lucius," she whispered tonelessly, staring at her hands.

"And now we know _why_ ," Blaise pressed on. He didn't have time for her wallowing.

She looked up, frowning. "Why what?"

"Why it didn't work. I'd always thought that the flaw was with the spell, that it was a hoax, written into a spell book to fill up space. But when I read that headline, I remembered something Draco told me. About why he was looking for a girl—any girl—to shag."

She grimaced. "Must I listen to this? He was a teenager. Did he need a reason?"

"Yes," he said, not caring about her discomfort. "The spell didn't work on Potter because it can only be used to take a _child's_ power. Someone who is still pure in soul _and_ body."

"A virgin," she said, nodding.

"Now that we know about Potter's bastard we know why it didn't work. The problem was _Potter_. But that headline gave me another idea: wouldn't it be poetic justice to take the power of the child who prevented your husband from taking Potter's power? Wouldn't your son be a perfect candidate for casting the spell on _Potter's son_?"

She leaned back, looking bored. "That's it? He is to become the new Dark Lord on the strength of taking one little boy's power?"

"There will be others as well. Harry Potter has two daughters with his wife and it was just in the _Prophet_ that she is expecting another child. The daughters also have cousins. There are a number of children of Draco's enemies who can provide the power to create the next great Dark Lord. That power can be supplemented by other children as well, but I think Draco will get great pleasure from taking the power of _those_ children in particular."

She crossed her arms. "There's still the problem of breaking him out of prison."

"That's not a problem," he said with a wave of his hand.

"Not a problem? Just because Aurors guard Azkaban now instead of Dementors—"

"It's still not a problem. I've worked that out. The problem is finding the spell."

She narrowed her eyes. "How do you know it would have worked if Potter had been a virgin?"

He sidestepped this question by asking her, "If you'd been inclined toward shagging any of the boys in your son's year, would you have chosen _Harry Potter_ , of all people?" He looked at her very directly. She smirked and he knew without her saying a word that he was definitely 'in.'

In more ways than one.

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	30. An Addition to the Family

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 **Chapter Thirty**

 **An Addition to the Family**

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Severus Snape was livid. He stormed into the kitchens, steam practically coming out of his ears as he regarded the small figures flitting about him. Three elves almost immediately stood to attention before him, wearing the uniform adopted for Hogwarts house-elves since Hermione Granger had successfully campaigned for their freedom. They looked like small, wizened bell boys for a magical hotel. Their matching purple jackets and shorts, trimmed with gold braid and the Hogwarts seal over the heart, did not suit the work they were doing in the kitchens.

"Professor Snape, sir!" one of the elves wheezed shrilly. "Would sir like some pumpkin pasties?" An elf held a platter before him heaped with steaming pasties, their crusts a perfect golden brown. He knocked the tray out of the elf's hands, sending the pasties flying.

"Which of you did it? I specifically gave instructions to the headmistress, which she gave to _you_ cretins, that while my son is staying at the castle none of the meals are to include _nuts_. Not a single nut! Yet what do I find in my son's room when I inspect it a mere half-hour before he is due to arrive? _Toffee-coated nut crunch_. Why? Did you think he might like to _kill_ himself as a _treat_? If he so much as breathes in the scent of nuts he can go into _shock_. And you do not wish to learn what I will do if _that_ occurs."

The elves scrambled to pick up the pasties while he turned on his heel and left. He strode up the stairs to the entrance hall and kept on climbing until the fourth floor. Passing a corridor leading to some classrooms and staff offices, he went to a quiet, disused wing where the headmistress had permitted him to create a suite for Penelope and Julian, another for himself, to be nearer to Julian than his usual quarters permitted, and yet another for Tilda Harrison.

After letting himself into Tilda's suite he looked around approvingly at the sitting room, resisting the urge to check on the bedroom. At first, he was simply going to have their four rooms adjoining the same sitting room, but on reflection, he decided that it could be awkward to have Penelope and Tilda sharing a common room, and that if only Tilda's suite was separate from the quarters for him, Penelope and Julian, then Tilda (and Penelope) could get the entirely erroneous impression that he still harboured intentions toward Penelope.

He was surprised by how much he did _not_ want Tilda to think this. He'd once thought that if Penelope changed her mind they might live, at last, as a 'normal' family. But Penelope, for all of her physical delicacy, had a will of iron when she chose to exercise it. Even when she ceded power she never _truly_ ceded it. If she temporarily chose to appear as though she had, it was still her decision, and one she could take back at any moment…

 _He sat silently beside Nate, who did not betray any response to the video. His mother had given him his tea and the boy was only to stay up until half-past nine, while the film he'd chosen would not end until eleven. Severus did not think it would harm the boy to stay up a little later on a Friday. When he was the same age no one monitored his bedtimes and it did him no harm. No, that was not the danger to him when he was a boy._

 _Nate did his best to stay awake, but while Severus actually found the tale of a boy and his horse quite compelling, Nate was snoring softly by ten-thirty. Severus carried Nate to his bed, in a corner of the living room. His 'room' was defined by creative use of a wardrobe and two bookshelves, concealed on the other side by more shelves. He thought crossly that if she'd used magic she could have better living conditions, despite the high cost of London flats. Her son could have a proper room._

 _He watched the end of the film, having nothing else to do and not being interested in Penelope's books and magazines. As he turned off the television and checked the time he heard a noise in the corridor. He went to the door to listen and found that he could see into the corridor through a small magnifier set into the wooden door. He heard Penelope's voice before he saw her. She'd been leaning against the door so that Severus had a grotesque, up-close view of her date's ear as he, presumably, kissed Penelope good night. However, he did not seem to mean for it to be the end of the date. Penelope shoved him away sharply. "I told you that I could see myself home."_

" _But it's the end of our date!" the man whinged._

" _This date was over two hours ago, Cyril. How many times do I need to tell you that?"_

" _Oh, bollocks, are you telling me that you, a single mum, are going to pass up a good shag because of politics? Look, I'm sorry I said—"_

" _Only because you've been caught out! Listen, how many ways can I say no?"_

 _Severus was looking straight into Cyril's eyes, though Cyril did not know this. He slipped his wand out of his sleeve and pointed it at the door, which he knew would not stop the spell, and whispered the incantation that would allow him to learn Cyril's true intentions._

 _Penelope, on a bed, naked. Cyril, lying on top of her, grunting..._

 _He put his wand away and without further consideration flung open the door, glaring at Cyril. He pushed him, sending him sprawling against the opposite wall, and pulled Penelope into the flat, placing himself between them. "You need to pay better attention. She said that the date is over. Please leave," he said in a quiet growl, clenching his fists._

 _Cyril stood again, backing away from the door. "Here, now, there's no cause to—wait a minute," he said, as if realising suddenly that he was speaking to an infinitely insignificant person; "why should I care what you say? You're just the bloody babysitter!"_

 _Severus took a step backward and fixed Cyril with a hostile gaze. "That is why you should care. I am, as you said, the bloody babysitter," he said crisply, slamming the door in Cyril's blank, staring face._

"Professor Snape!" Severus turned as he closed the door to Tilda's suite. Harry Potter strode down the corridor toward him, his hair standing on end. Severus considered turning around again and pretending he hadn't heard him.

"Everything ready?" Harry asked anxiously. "Teddy's nervous about his mum coming back, after September." He reddened. "He's also keen to talk to her. Every weekend he's been with us since October he's tried to call her on our mobiles and hasn't been able to get her."

Severus turned and began walking. Harry jogged to catch up him. "I am afraid," he said reluctantly, "that that may be my fault."

" _May_ be your fault? Is it or isn't it? And wait a minute— _your_ fault? How would it be yours? And that may be the first time I've ever heard you take blame for _anything_ ," he added, following Severus closely as he stepped into Penelope and Julian's suite.

"You may recall my mentioning my son to you?" Severus said as he sped up to cross the sitting room, forcing Harry to do likewise to keep up with him.

"I remember," Harry said, frowning. Severus relished his confusion but continued.

"I have been visiting with my son on the same weekends that your son has visited you." He opened the door to Julian's room, wallpapered with small dragons and hippogriffs by the Hogwarts house-elves, a special surprise for his birthday. Since Julian was born on the solstice, Severus was always careful of giving Julian distinct birthday and Christmas gifts, rather than combination gifts. He didn't want his son to feel short-changed simply because he'd been born near Christmas. A glance around the room verified for him that the offending nut-crunch had been removed. "During the first visit in October—"

He hesitated, backing out of the room and closing the door firmly. Severus did _not_ want to discuss this with Harry Potter, of all people. For one thing he did not care to admit that he'd had difficulty entertaining Julian since his brother had gone off to school. He'd never realised the extent to which Nate had taken it upon himself to amuse Julian when he'd had the pair of them for the weekend. He'd tried the usual activities: the zoo, where it was a nightmare to protect him from the smell of nuts, and Julian _always_ complained that he wanted to see elephants; a football match, which Julian disdained now that he knew about Quidditch; and the cinema. Despite his best efforts, Julian wanted to return to Diagon Alley, last seen when they'd shopped for Nate's school things, and every activity he proposed to the boy, no matter how much he'd enjoyed it in the past, paled beside going to wizarding shops, eating in a wizarding pub, or watching a wizarding sport on broomsticks.

Severus had utterly forgotten about the robes he'd left at Latere Farm in the form of a tweed jacket until Tilda Harrison sent owl-post to remind him that they were still there. Struggling as he was to schedule activities for the following weekend with Julian and steeling himself to withstand another two days of demands that they do something magical, which Penelope had expressly forbidden, he allowed himself to vent his frustration in his reply to her. In return he received a note saying simply, _Bring Julian to Latere Farm on Saturday morning. You can retrieve your jacket and I think I may have a way to amuse your son for the day. Perhaps longer._

Severus told Julian not to tell his mother that they'd taken the Knight Bus. Now that his son knew that he was a wizard he was damned if he was going to continue to mess about with Muggle transportation, though he didn't defy Penelope and take Julian to Diagon Alley. They walked down the drive to the house and found her waiting for them wearing jodhpurs and riding boots, holding the reins of two tame-looking piebald horses. He was amazed that Julian, who seemed to have forgotten how to laugh or smile since his brother had gone to Hogwarts, was soon grinning with glee as he got Minnie to canter, following Tilda around the paddock. She held a long rein connecting their horses as they rode.

"Julian prefers doing—things—with his brother," Severus said slowly, still loath to admit this to Harry. "Since his brother came to Hogwarts—"

"Wait—you have _another_ kid?" Severus stood still for only a moment, shaking his head in disgust before carrying on, opening the door to the corridor again.

"I distinctly remember telling you that I was in the habit of taking both my son and his older brother—his _half_ -brother—on weekend excursions."

"Oh, right. But you did _not_ mention that he was at Hogwarts. I'd remember that," Harry added, a defensive whine in his voice.

"No, I did not mention that for a good reason." Severus stopped and faced Harry, an uncomfortable guilty sensation making him feel cross. "There is something about my son's mother—and her older son's father—that I have not told you."

Harry stopped and looked at him expectantly. "Actually, there are a lot of things you haven't told me, but I haven't noticed that my joining the staff has made you want to share much about your private life with me," he said peevishly.

Severus drew his lips into a line. "Well, we share something now. In a way. Nate might as well be my stepson, when all is said and done, even though his mother did not marry me, and—"

"Wait. Nate? Nate who?" Severus watched while Harry's eyes moved rapidly. It was odd that he'd never before realised that it was possible to _see_ Harry Potter thinking. "Wait—Nate Clearwater? He's your son's brother?"

"Yes, he is my son's brother," Severus said levelly. "But more pertinent is the identity of his father."

Harry frowned again. "Yeah, who _is_ his father? Or was. At the beginning of the term Ginny said that she asked him whether his dad was Muggle-born. He said he wasn't. She thought he might be related to her brother's old girlfriend, but he said his dad was a wizard, so she reckoned it was some other Clearwater family—" Severus waited for Harry to catch up. "Wait a minute," Harry said slowly; " _who is your kid's mother_?"

Severus sighed. "Penelope Clearwater. She is returning to Hogwarts for the first time in years. And she is concerned because—"

"—because _bloody hell_ , Nate has his _mum's_ name, not his dad's, and if his dad was a wizard, then—" He stopped. "Is his father who I think—?"

"Yes," was all Severus said, forcing himself to face Harry.

" _Bloody hell,_ " he said again, running his hands through his hair. "Ginny has been teaching her _nephew_ since September. And the twins' cousin!" He shook his head and stared at Severus with wide eyes. "Molly! When she finds out she'll _kill_ you for not telling her!"

Severus sighed with annoyance. "I have thought of that. Molly Weasley will no doubt be quite displeased to have been kept in the dark. It is not as though I did not urge Penelope to tell the Weasleys. I never thought it was right or proper for her to keep him from his family. But she had her reasons for doing so and I never tried to circumvent her wishes."

 _Severus and Penelope stared at each other for a moment after he'd closed the door on Cyril. Then Penelope leaned against the wall, covering her mouth and shaking with laughter. Tears came to her eyes, she was laughing so hard. He didn't realise that he had been smiling until she was breathing normally, looking up at him with a bemused expression._

" _I've never seen you do that before," she said in wonder, looking at him strangely._

" _Do what?"_

" _Not frown. Or look stern." She did not seem willing to actually characterise it as smiling. "Ah, there we go," she added with a sigh, the corner of her mouth twisting. "Back to normal."_

 _She went to the small kitchen, calling over her shoulder, "I need a cuppa. You?"_

" _Yes, thank you," he replied, furrowing his brow at the same time that he wondered how not to do that constantly. As he sat at the small square table and she plugged in the electric kettle, he said, "Is there any point to reminding you that you are a witch?"_

 _She still had the kettle in her hand. "You mean this? I never did like 'magical' tea even when I wasn't pretending to be a Muggle. It has a different taste when it's made the long way." She put the kettle down and turned away._

" _No, I meant—your date. You do realise that if a witch used magic in self-defence against a Muggle that it is entirely likely that the Wizengamot would exonerate her?"_

 _She stopped and leaned against the narrow dresser, a mug in each hand. "Perhaps. Were you about to use magic on him if he didn't clear off?"_

" _Perhaps," he echoed her, not caring to reveal that he had used Legilimancy to determine Cyril's intentions. "It was unclear how—intractable—he might be. Simply having another person present seems to have driven him off, fortunately."_

 _She sat beside him. "Somehow I don't think he would have left if you'd been my usual babysitter. He'd have told Abby to sod off, probably. And she'd have done it." She opened a tea tin and removed two bags. "Hope you don't mind, I generally don't keep loose tea around."_

 _He almost felt the urge to smile again. "Let me guess—you studied Divination in school."_

 _She snorted briefly. "I wonder whether she invested in a business that made tea bags. If so, after putting so many people off loose tea, she could have made a fortune."_

" _Ah, but that would assume that she had 'Seen' a future in tea bags," he countered._

" _Well," Penelope responded, going to the kettle, "she correctly predicted one thing, didn't she?" Severus went silent at that, unable to prevent himself from seeing the Dark Lord in his mind's eye, and many other horrible things._

 _The abrupt silence that fell was broken only by the noise of the water being poured into the mugs. She took milk from the refrigerator, putting it on the table. Every sound echoed painfully in the small space—her chair scraping the floor, the sugar bowl being placed on the table, a drawer opening and closing, the clink of spoons. When they were drinking quietly, Penelope broke the silence again. Severus wanted to do it but the longer it went on the more awkward he felt. It was also difficult to banish the images from his mind that had been conjured up by her words._

" _I'm sor—" she started to say, then shook herself. "You know what you need?" she said instead. "Some good P.R. for Slytherin. I think a lot of people still think of it as the evil Dark Arts house, but you were on our side in the war. So were others. A lot of people don't know that."_

" _What is P.R.?" he asked, frowning again._

" _Public relations."_

 _He saw a slight smirk at the edge of her mouth. "Ah," he said, nodding. "I see. Well, it is true that many do not know that there are half-blood and even Muggle-born students in Slytherin."_

" _See? I didn't know that. About the Muggle-borns, I mean. Of course, even though you were—you were doing virtually the same thing that—that he was doing there was only a very small article in the Prophet, when all was said and done, and that was largely a list of names…"_

 _Severus could tell that "he" was Percy Weasley. "How do you manage to hide magic when Nate sees his paternal grandparents?" he asked, giving her a moment to collect herself. Speaking about Percy Weasley seemed to have brought her perilously close to tears. "That must be a challenge. Molly and Arthur were never very skilled at—" He stopped abruptly, seeing the guilt on her face. "He doesn't see them, does he?" he said astutely._

" _He sees my parents. But—well, that's exactly why I was afraid of telling the Weasleys."_

 _He wanted to say that that was nonsense, she was more likely afraid that Molly would pass judgment on her, but after a moment's thought he decided that she was probably right to fear this. However, thinking about another little boy who'd been kept in the dark about his parentage, he said, "You should tell them."_

" _No," she said firmly. "When he gets his Hogwarts letter he'll find out everything."_

"What are you going to do when Molly and Arthur come for Christmas tea?" Harry asked, clearly trying to restrain his glee.

"I am not going to do anything. Penelope is rather nervous, but she is planning to introduce Nate to his grandparents and apologise for their not having known about him." Severus did not want to tell Harry, but he was worried that Penelope would make some excuse at the last minute to stay away. He'd been carrying her secret for seven years and no longer wished to do so. He had no particular love for the Weasleys but he did have a grudging respect for them. They'd sacrificed a great deal, including one of their sons, and he did not doubt that they would feel more than a little slighted by the news that he'd known about Nate and hadn't told them.

Harry shook his head. Severus could tell that he was trying not to smile. "I'm glad you find the prospect of your wife's mother throwing a fit amusing," Severus said, not sounding glad at all.

Harry grinned fully now. "Can I tell Ginny? And the girls? It won't be long before Molly and Arthur arrive—maybe twelve or fifteen hours. She can keep a secret until then. And the girls will be excited to know that they have a cousin who's a Hogwarts student."

"However," Severus said quickly, a warning in his voice, "you cannot tell Nate. Head of House or not. Penelope wants to do that herself tonight after she and Julian arrive."

Harry looked a little deflated. "All right. If that's how she wants to do it." He turned as if to go, then turned around again. "Wait—what was Tilda up to all of those weekends when Teddy couldn't get her on the telephone? You said that it was your fault."

Severus had hoped Harry would forget that he'd asked about that, given the rather surprising news about Nate Clearwater, but he'd noticed that Harry Potter had an annoying habit of remembering everything one most hoped he would forget and forgetting whatever one hoped he would recall. "As I said, Julian's brother usually amused him during outings, and without him, I found it more—difficult. Julian has also been quite insistent that he wishes to see and do things wizarding children would do, but his mother objects strongly to that. They live in the Muggle world and she has no plans to change that. She feels that he will be enmeshed in the wizarding world soon enough, once he comes to Hogwarts, and has asked me not to change the sort of things we do on the weekends just because he now knows about magic."

Harry raised his eyebrows, waiting. "And—?"

"And," Severus went on, "Miss Harrison invited us to her farm the first weekend in October. He enjoyed riding a horse and seeing the other animals. We have been going once a month." He didn't tell him that they'd been meeting Tilda elsewhere for outings on the other weekends.

Harry's jaw dropped. " _What_?"

Severus wished he hadn't told Harry anything. The look of jealousy about his eyes was unmistakable. _Might I remind you that you are married?_ he thought. _And that you supposedly do not remember begetting your son?_ "Do you have something to say about my visits with my son?" Severus asked him pointedly, a challenge in his voice. He wasn't certain whether Harry was going to start throwing hexes or just curse him verbally, but his colour was rapidly changing from his usual pallor to an unflattering lobster red.

"No," Harry said tersely. He turned abruptly and walked in the opposite direction, calling over his shoulder, "I'll see you tomorrow for tea," as though it were a challenge.

Severus also turned on his heel, swearing under his breath. As he passed a portrait, the old wizard in it chided him. "Language! Must set an example for the young ones!" Severus simply swore at the painting more vociferously, making the wizard cry out in alarm, "No wonder all of the young people are turning into such hooligans! Look at their role models!"

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Harry was practically skipping when he entered their flat. Ginny sat by the fire, waving her wand to wrap a Christmas gift. She was still very thin, being not quite two months pregnant. However, she was excited about the new baby, even giving Ron an exclusive about it, in part so that Rita would not find out first. When it ran in the _Prophet_ it carried his name still. She looked up, smiling at Harry, humming what he still thought of as _God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriffs_ , because Sirius had sung it the Christmas they were at Grimmauld Place.

"You look happy," she said, waving her wand again so that the wrapped box floated across the room and settled under the tree with the rest of the gifts. "Excited about Christmas at last? You've been so bored with the preparations I thought you'd grown out of your youthful enthusiasm for it."

He grinned. "I just got my youthful enthusiasm back. You'll never guess what."

"What?" But as Ginny turned her face up to him, smiling innocently, he suddenly faltered. He couldn't imagine that Ginny would think his desire to tell her mother about Nate a good thing. His face fell.

"Erm, well I was just talking to Snape."

"Are the rooms ready? For Tilda and his son and his son's mum?"

"Yeah," he said. "But that's not what we were talking about."

"What were you talking about?"

"Well, see, um," he said, hesitating, now that he was faced with actually telling her. "Did—did Dumbledore ever tell you much about Percy?"

"Percy?" She looked confused. "Why were you and Severus discussing Percy?"

"Merry Christmas, Potters!" Mad-Eye Moody's ghost drifted through the wall. He wore ghostly holly on the brim of his bowler. Ginny turned to him, starting to smile again.

"Oh, hello, Alastor. Merry Christmas."

Harry sighed. Why was it that whenever he needed to talk to Ginny, _Moody_ had to interfere? It had been the same for _twelve years_. "Merry Christmas, Moody," Harry said wearily.

"Christmas Eve, Potter!" Moody grunted, perching on the mantel. "Try to look _cheerful_ about it."

"Harry and I were talking, Alastor," Ginny explained to him gently. "For some reason, we were discussing my brother Per—"

"—person," Harry sputtered. "Her brother person." His voice had gone up an octave, it seemed. He was convinced that Moody specifically came into the room whenever they were discussing Percy so that he could put a stop to it. After so long it seemed strange that Moody should do this—and it wasn't even as though Percy came up in conversation very often—but Harry did not believe that Moody coming through the wall at _just_ that moment was a coincidence.

"Her brother _person_?" Moody said sceptically.

"Erm, perhaps I should have said her brother _people_. They'll—they'll be coming tomorrow. For Christmas. You know. A time for family, all that."

Moody moved his ghostly bowler-hat so that it no longer concealed his ghostly magical eye. He examined Harry with the eye, making him shiver. If possible, it was worse to be examined with the eye now that Moody was dead than when the man was alive. "Brother _people._ "

Harry smiled at him feebly, wishing he would disappear again. "Right. Brother people. And—and mother and father people," he added in a slightly squeaky voice.

Moody squinted at Harry. "Did you hit your head, Potter?"

"Erm," Harry said, not feeling any cleverer. He didn't want Moody to prevent him from telling Ginny what he wanted to tell her so he would have to try to find a way to do it without saying Percy's name. "Erm, I was just telling Ginny that her—her brother person was—was doing something similar to what I was evidently doing about twelve years ago."

Ginny furrowed her brow for a moment and then opened her eyes wide. "Who—?"

"Hermione will be glad to see one of _Snape's_ guests again," Harry said, also opening his eyes wide and looking toward the mantel. "The last time she saw this guest she felt rather _stiff_ and you were indisposed, _writing in your diary_. I hope our drinking wine won't offend her. She may prefer _clear water_."

"You mean—" Ginny's mouth hung open in shock.

"I mean—" Harry nodded.

"That's all right, Potter," Moody said suddenly. "You can stop dilly-dallying around. I'll go before you rupture something from trying to speak in code." He drifted back through the wall again and Harry breathed a sigh of relief, followed by a snort of indignation.

"I was _not_ dillying. Nor dallying. And I was definitely not _rupturing_."

Ginny laughed. "Harry! Tell me! Why is Penelope Clearwater coming?" When he told her she was shocked. " _Nate Clearwater_? Penelope Clearwater had Percy's son?" Her mouth hung open again.

Harry nodded. "And Snape's son's brother."

"Mum will—"

"Yes, I expect so." Harry was finding it hard not to grin.

Ginny looked at him shrewdly. "And you were thinking of telling her tonight, weren't you?"

"Well—"

" _Harry_ —"

"All right, I _considered_ it. But Snape said she'd find out tomorrow, so I decided not to get involved. I told him I wanted to tell you and the girls and he didn't object. So, I've told you."

"I don't want to wake the girls, though. I reckon that can wait for the morning. It was hard enough to get them to bed, they were so excited."

Harry threw himself into his armchair and stared into the fire. "To think, we've been teaching Percy's son since September."

She smiled and crossed the room. Perching on his knee and putting her arm around his neck, she said, "That explains his first name. I thought it was odd that he had such an unusual one. Nate is usually short for Nathan."

"What d'you mean?"

"Oh, that's right! You weren't there for his Sorting. And I generally take care of reading off the names on the register at the start of lessons. Nate is short for Ignatius. It's Percy's middle name. But I rarely think about—about him these days." She ducked her head, as though feeling guilty about this. "And I don't think I was even aware of his middle name until—until the funeral. It didn't exactly come up in daily conversation."

Harry looked grim. "Even if I'd known that was his name I'm not sure I would have thought anything of it. I reckon I heard Percy's middle name when I had my hearing at the Ministry just before my fifth year. It didn't stick in my brain, though. I certainly wouldn't think, 'Oh, that kid has Percy Weasley's middle name, what's with that?' Some wizards give their kids some damn odd names, after all. Like _Severus_. And _Draco_ ," he added, snorting.

"And Remus and Sirius," she added, smirking.

Harry pouted. "Watch it. Two of my parents' best friends," he said, but the warning in his voice was playful, she could tell.

She tightened her hold around him. "I am watching it. Whatever 'it' is. I was just pointing out that it wasn't just people you don't like. How exciting! Oh, I know Mum will be cross," she said, making Harry snort. "But it's lovely. Nate's a nice boy, and he and Teddy are good friends. Teddy's his cousin! Almost."

"Step-cousin. We're certainly all in the family, yeah?"

She patted her stomach for a moment. "Some of us are in the family way," she said mischievously. Harry groaned but she laughed. "You didn't mind working on that."

He hugged her close to him and tilted her head so he could kiss her cheek. "It was hardly work. And I still don't mind doing that."

She glanced around the room. "Where's some mistletoe when you need it?"

"Since when do we need mistletoe? Besides, it has bad associations for me," he said, grimacing. "Aren't you worried about Nargles?" he added, with a sly grin.

She gave him a smacking kiss. "Very funny. Of course, I noticed that the first time Luna got Ron under some mistletoe she wasn't saying a word about Nargles."

"That's because he had his tongue down her throat, which is something I _really_ don't want to think about, so thank you very much for reminding me about that event."

"Maybe he was looking under her tonsils for Nargles," she countered, grinning. Harry guffawed while she stood and brushed her robes down. "Well, I think that's everything. Presents wrapped, we've talked to Moody and sent him packing by being incompetent at speaking in code—"

"I am not incompetent!" He pouted, but when he realised what he was doing he tried to stop, unsuccessfully.

She pulled him to his feet and put her arms around his waist. "No, you just have—particular talents. And speaking in code doesn't need to be one of the outstanding ones, fortunately."

He kissed her softly and whispered. "Merry Christmas, Ginny. Would you like me to display one of my outstanding talents now?" She laughed and took his hand, leading him to their bedroom, which he decided to take as a 'yes.'

#/#/#

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	31. Secrets and Schemes

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 **Replay**

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 **Chapter Thirty-One**

 **Secrets and Schemes**

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Severus stood at the door to the castle. He was finding it a bit nerve-wracking that Tilda was travelling with Penelope and Julian. They hadn't met in person, but once when Julian wanted to call his mum while they were at Latere Farm, Penelope had been in the middle of something and needed to call them back a few minutes later. When she did, Tilda answered. Severus had no idea how Teddy Harrison had failed to get her on the telephone over a half-dozen weekends, but it might have been while she was out with Severus and Julian, since she didn't carry a mobile. Tilda had mumbled something into the telephone before handing it wordlessly to Julian, who could be saying anything to his mother when he was at home. Severus hoped it wasn't what he'd said to _him_ during their last trip to Latere Farm.

Julian had inquired of his father whether he was going to ask Miss Harrison to marry him. Severus had sputtered and said, "She isn't my girlfriend." It was the only answer he could think of.

Julian had shrugged and said, "So what? Okay, maybe you should ask her to be your girlfriend first. That's probably a good idea," he said sensibly in his thin, reedy voice, nodding his head.

Severus didn't know whether to laugh or feel incredibly depressed. _Oh, yes, I'm just dying to ask someone else to marry me, because it went so well the last time._

When Penelope stepped down from the carriage she gave Severus a strange look. Julian bounced out after his mother. "Dad! Stan let me sit with him while he was driving this time!"

Severus looked at Penelope, alarmed. _Bugger. Now she knows that I already took him on the bus._ "Penelope," he began, but she shook her head.

" _Not here_ ," she hissed tersely. " _After Julian is in bed I need to speak to you._ "

He nodded before helping Tilda step down from the carriage. Julian beamed at them and Severus took his hand from Tilda's as soon as he could. "Don't bother with your bags," he said, nodding at the carriage. "The house-elves will bring them up."

"House-elves?" Tilda said in surprise.

"Oh, boy! House-elves!" Julian cried, bouncing. Severus sighed. Penelope did not look happy. He did not expect their talk to go well.

When they reached the fourth-floor corridor, he showed Penelope and Julian to their quarters, and led Tilda to her suite. Tilda's surprise was obvious when she saw that her bags were in the bedroom, visible through a doorway. "Oh," she said. "When you said house-elves would take care of it, you meant—"

"—that house-elves would take care of it." A fire burned in the grate and a couch faced the fire. A tree stood a few feet away, glistening with crystalline ornaments softly singing Christmas carols.

"Thank you," she said, turning to him. "When is breakfast?"

"We usually gather in the Great Hall at eight o'clock, but the headmistress has set aside a separate hall for our meals due to the family nature of our large party. I will come for you at eight to show you the way. I expect now that you are quite tired from the journey, so—"

"Yes," she said. "I definitely need to lie down. Thank you again, Severus. Good night."

"Good night." Severus remembered Julian's words: _You should ask her to be your girlfriend first._ Did he _want_ to do that? He hesitated at the door to the suite while she stood on the opposite side of the room, gazing out the window. When she turned she was startled to still see him.

"Oh! Is there something you wanted, Severus?"

 _Very good question. Is there something here that I want? Or someone?_

"I just—good night," he said again, opening the door. "I will see you in the morning."

When he'd closed the door, he leaned heavily against it, wishing he knew his own mind. He usually did, but everything about Tilda Harrison was complicated. When the door to Penelope and Julian's suite opened opposite him he felt his life's complications multiply again.

"Severus? Julian would like to say good night." He breathed a little easier, realising that she was only asking him to do his fatherly duty.

"Of course," he said, nodding. Julian was sitting up in his blue-curtained four-poster bed, beaming as he had when he'd bounced out of the carriage.

"Dad!" he said with wide eyes as his father sat on the edge of the bed. "Mum did _magic_."

"All I did was to get him a cup of hot chocolate," she said, reddening.

"And have you _seen_ our Christmas tree?" he demanded.

"Seen it?" Severus responded. "I trimmed it."

Without warning, Julian threw his arms around his father and hugged him tightly. "Thank you, Dad. Thank you _so much._ "

Severus was shocked. Julian was not usually demonstrative with him. He gave hugs and kisses to his mother, and she to him, but he'd never felt comfortable doing the same and the boy seemed to understand and usually responded accordingly. Severus held the boy tightly, closing his eyes, putting his chin on the top of the dark hair. He could tell that Julian was saying _Thank you for being magical_ and _Thank you for convincing Mum to come to Hogwarts for Christmas_. He'd taken magic for granted when he was young, but Julian had not even known of the magical world until his brother had received his Hogwarts letter. Now he was at Hogwarts, surrounded by magic. Severus held Julian by his shoulders and looked in the bright, excited face. "Are you going to be a good boy and go to sleep, or are you too excited?"

"I thought he'd be too excited about _Christmas_ to sleep," Penelope said from the doorway.

"Christmas is fine," Julian said airily, "but this is _Hogwarts_."

"Now, Julian," Severus said sternly, "I know this is new and exciting but you must promise to be good and not wander about the castle. It is very easy to get lost, or to find that the way you used to get somewhere is no longer the way to go back."

"I promise," he said immediately. Severus quickly dropped a kiss on the top of Julian's head.

"Good. Now finish your hot chocolate and get some sleep. Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas, Dad. Merry Christmas, Mum," he said, picking up his mug and drinking dutifully. Severus returned to the sitting room while Penelope kissed their son good night.

"We need to talk, Severus," she said as soon as the door was closed. He nodded.

"I know. But first—" He took out his wand and pointed it at Julian's door. After he'd Imperturbed it he put his wand away again. Penelope sat at the opposite end of the couch from him, her face inscrutable. "How—how was your trip?" he began, hoping that he could deflect her.

"Revealing," she said, jiggling her crossed leg impatiently. He cleared his throat, starting to feel uncomfortable. "For one thing, I had no idea that Julian even _knew_ your Miss Harrison—"

"She's not _my_ —"

"When the bus arrived at her house he ran to meet her with _hugs and kisses_. He wanted to show me _his horse_." Her voice went up alarmingly. "We would have delayed the other passengers, though. Once we were moving again I found out a _lot_ that I did not know about."

He cleared his throat again. "I never once told Julian to lie to you about—"

"Perhaps not, but he certainly got the impression that he wasn't supposed to say anything. That also explains why he's been so _dodgy_ when he's come home from a day out with you."

"He probably just thought—"

"—that I'd be jealous of Tilda Harrison."

"No!"

"Yes!" she countered. "And I am."

He finally met her eyes, shocked. "What? But I thought—"

"No!" she immediately said, scornful. "Not because of _you_. Haven't I been telling you that you need to stop thinking about me in that way?"

He snorted. "According to you I never started, so how could I stop? How can you tell someone that they only want to marry you because they feel an obligation, and—"

" _It's Julian_ ," she said firmly. "How do you think I felt: a woman I'd never met hugging and kissing my son as though _she's_ his mother? Were you going to tell me about this _ever_?"

He sighed, not having expected this at all. "Yes, we've been going to Latere Farm," he said, his voice tired, "and yes, he has started to think of Minnie as 'his' horse, but—"

"You've been going other places as well." She laughed ruefully. "I can't picture _you_ on the Millennium Wheel! I didn't think you had that much faith in Muggle technology. When _I_ wanted to go, you didn't. What's changed?" He cleared his throat again and she rolled her eyes. "Have a bloody sweet or stop doing that, Severus. I asked you: How could you do this to Julian?"

He threw up his hands, standing and going to the mantel. "Do _what_? Permit him to enjoy himself when he's with me? Give him the opportunity to learn to ride? Take steps to avoid his being bored without his brother?"

She looked chastised. "I never said—I meant getting his _hopes_ up. About Tilda Harrison."

Severus dropped his jaw. " _What_?"

"You don't see it because you don't want to. He _adores_ her. He's convinced that you'll marry her and she'll be his stepmother. I think he was worried about my being jealous. That's why he didn't tell me about her. Whenever he's come back from a 'dad' day he's always terribly affectionate with me, saying things like, 'You'll always be my mum, you know.' It was like he'd learnt lines from a bad melodrama. Now I know why."

"I told you," he said slowly, feeling frustrated by how dim she was being, "I never asked him to lie to you, nor conceal from you where we had gone, what we had done or with whom we did it."

"No, but you never volunteered that information yourself, either, and you always used to. Or Nate would, but he's at school now, so he can't."

Severus sighed, sitting again. This display of insecurity was surprising to him. He normally thought of her as much stronger. "I am not marrying Tilda Harrison," he said firmly.

"Why not?" Penelope exclaimed. "Is she not pretty enough for you?"

" _What_?" He felt like he would soon develop whiplash from the changing conversation.

"Why aren't you going out with her?" Penelope demanded. "Going out properly, that is. Without Julian. You seem to get on well enough, and she likes Julian, so it's not as though you have to explain your son to her. She knows about magic because of her son. And Harry, presumably. So what is it, exactly?"

Utterly confused, he said, "I thought you did not want me to see Tilda Harrison."

"I never said that! I wanted to know why you didn't tell me that you and Julian had been going to see her, and going other places with her as well. You can't _do_ this, Severus."

He shook his head again, feeling a great need for a headache potion. " _What_?"

"Get Julian's hopes up! What happens when you don't ask her out, she tires of waiting and then disappears from your lives? He'll be devastated! You can't dangle a potential stepmother in front of a little boy and expect him to be all right when she's disappeared with no trace."

Severus stood again, sputtering. "And what do you do, exactly? Nate thought I was going to be his stepfather. You were carrying my child and I asked you to marry me. But you refused. And have you stopped seeing other men? In fact, it seems bloody useful to you that I was taking both boys out as it probably gave you more time for going out with men who were also never going to be your sons' stepfather because neither I nor they are _Percy Weasley_!"

She looked at him, tears in her eyes. "That's why I only go out when the boys are gone now. And don't you think I'd love to get over Percy? Why do you think I avoid even doing magic? Everything in this world," she said, gesturing at the room around them, "reminds me of _him_. And even though the two of you share many things, I eventually came to realise that that wasn't enough. I'm sorry that I hurt you," she added, tears flowing freely now, "but do you think I _want_ to be this way? That I wouldn't welcome meeting and falling in love with someone new? Do you think I want to get my sons' hopes up again the way Nate got his hopes up with you?"

 _He'd wanted to reason with Penelope the evening that he'd driven off Cyril. He wanted to say that Percy had been a hero and that Molly Weasley might be quite understanding about their not having married—who had time during a war? But he couldn't get the words out. Instead she'd gone on comparing them—in Severus's favour—and he was relieved when they moved to the lounge and the conversation changed to other, safer topics. He didn't realise how long they had been talking when Penelope let out a yawn, abruptly covering her mouth._

" _I'm sorry, how rude—goodness!" she added, looking at her watch. "How did it get to be so late?"_

 _Severus also looked at her watch; it was nearly two-thirty. "I should go," he said reluctantly. After drinking her tea she had taken her hair down, kicked off her shoes and sat beside him on the couch. He did not wonder what Percy Weasley had seen in her, though he did wonder briefly what she had seen in him, and felt more sympathetic about her not telling the Weasleys about her son._

" _Don't go," she said suddenly, a strange light in her eyes._

" _What?" He was unable to prevent his frown._

" _Stay," she said suddenly, her voice cracking a little. "Please," she added._

 _He looked at the couch, pressing his hand on the cushion. "Well, I suppose it is late to be walking back to the castle from the village. And this seems comfortable enough."_

" _I didn't mean stay here," she said, also patting the couch. "I meant—" Her eyes moved to the bedroom. He could see the corner of the bed, which suddenly made his throat feel rather tight. His gaze was brought back to her when she stood and took his hand, pulling him to his feet, forcing him to extricate his hand or follow her to the bedroom. He followed. When she had closed the door he suddenly found himself up against it, her body pressing against his. He couldn't say afterward who had moved first but they were kissing, barely touching each other, just grazing each other's lips. Severus pulled back suddenly, knocking his head on the door._

" _Are—are you certain?" he asked, wondering whether she'd carried the idea that he and Percy Weasley were both spies so far that she now laboured under the delusion that they were interchangeable._

 _She swallowed, leaning her body against his so that she could not fail to know how she had affected him. "I'm tired of hiding. I know that much. All day, every day, all I do is hide. And yes, I know I made that choice. Because not hiding would be—painful. Too painful. I used to be certain of so many things but now I don't think I'm certain of anything. So, no; I'm not certain. But I had rather hoped that you might be certain enough for both of us," she said softly._

 _Before he knew what he was doing he was kissing her again, deeply, while he slid down the zipper on the back of her dress and the fabric slipped to the floor…_

Severus blinked, looking away; that was not a productive thing to remember. He sighed and sat on the couch again. "I did not think I was 'leading on' our son. He _has_ wondered whether I will be asking Miss Harrison to marry me, but I informed him that she wasn't my girlfriend and it was his opinion that I _should_ ask her to be my girlfriend first." His mouth twisted ruefully. To his relief Penelope laughed, looking considerably more cheerful as she dried her eyes.

"Well," she said, smiling. "Out of the mouths of babes."

He grimaced, leaning back on the couch and staring at the leaping flames.

 _Out of the mouths of babes, indeed_.

#/#/#

Nate Clearwater and Teddy Harrison walked back to Gryffindor Tower with slow steps after stuffing themselves at Christmas tea. They both carried armfuls of gifts from their families.

"We could try levitating these," Teddy said, grunting with effort as he dropped a Weasley jumper and tried not to drop the chess set his mother had given him, along with a Sneakoscope from Harry and a large package of Honeydukes sweets from Ginny, plus assorted sweets from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes that Ginny had tried to convince him to throw in a bin. Her brothers had been _very_ eager to have him try some but he had declined. He gave up and dropped everything, throwing the crown he'd got from a Christmas cracker on the top of the pile.

"Okay," Nate said eagerly, wearing a bright red bowler-hat from his cracker.

He juggled seven packages from his mother, a heavy Potions text from Severus, a delicate Christmas tree made by his little brother from egg cartons, and _three_ Weasley jumpers that had been knitted quickly by his newly-discovered grandmother, plus several electrical plugs that his grandfather had pulled from his pockets, saying enthusiastically, "You've lived in Muggle London? Well, you'll enjoy these, then!" Nate had no idea what he was supposed to do with the plugs but he'd smiled and nodded and thanked him for the 'gift.'

It had been a very exciting afternoon, punctuated frequently by his grandmother hugging him tightly. His mum had initially looked nervous about telling his grandmother about his existence. It was a complete surprise to him that after years of resistance she was finally doing this. Molly Weasley had looked cross at first but she also didn't seem to want to show this and instead she had caused knitting needles to appear, moving very quickly as she measured him with her wand.

While it had been exciting to learn of his father's identity and to immediately acquire a lot of enthusiastic relatives—including _Harry Potter_ as his uncle-by-marriage, plus Teddy as his step-cousin—he was growing weary of the Weasley-attention by eight o'clock. Teddy had helped him by claiming to be falling asleep. They had actually never felt more alert.

Nate obligingly put all of his gifts on the floor beside Teddy's and pulled out his wand. They both pointed their wands at the pile and cried, " _Wingardium leviosa!_ " The articles on the floor of the corridor started to stir restlessly, but the movement almost immediately subsided and everything was still again. Nate's mouth twisted as he regarded the heap of gifts.

"Let's try again," he said with determination. Teddy nodded. Just as they were about to cast the spell again, however, Teddy heard a whisper:

" _They're doing magic!_ "

He turned around, squinting into the dimness. Farther down the corridor, two deep niches held a suit of armour and a statue of a mid-twelfth-century wizard, hero of a goblin war, his robes in tatters and his hat at a rakish angle. Both figures were draped in holly. "It's all right, I'm fine, just too full of food to _think_ ," Nate said nervously. "I can _do_ this. I _did_ do this already. Flitwick said I was a natural. Of course, that was just a feather."

" _Shut up,_ " Teddy said tersely, staring down the corridor, taking slow steps toward the armour and the statue, his wand at the ready. He stopped and heard it: _laughter_ , very, very quiet laughter. And a tiny _ping_ : the sound of metal being hit very lightly.

"What's going on?" Nate whispered, following him; Teddy turned to him for a moment, but had to look away. He couldn't take his best friend seriously with the red bowler-hat on his head.

"We have company," Teddy said quietly, gesturing toward the armour. Nate nodded. They drew closer and closer to the armour, then both pointed their wands at it. Teddy felt a thrill running through his body as he prepared to say the incantation. He didn't think he would fail this time.

" _Wingardium leviosa!_ " they cried together. The armour went flying into the air, revealing three small figures in the niche.

"I _told_ you to be quiet!" Ruby Potter said to her sister Rory, giving her a small shove.

"It wasn't me, it was _you_ telling _us_ to shut up!" Rory retorted, pointing at Julian Snape.

Julian frowned at Teddy. "Are your sisters always like this?"

As Nate and Teddy looked at each other, Teddy felt a foreboding in the pit of his stomach. He turned to his sisters. "You _know_ you aren't supposed to wander around. What if you get lost, or get your foot stuck in a stair? You could wait for days for someone to come and help you." During the previous months he'd come to understand how much of a handful his sisters were for Harry and Ginny and also knew that their parents didn't know the half of what the twins got up to, including Rory, who was better than Ruby at covering her tracks.

Rory, however, was smug as she took out a piece of parchment and presented it to Nate and Teddy. "No danger of getting lost," she said. "We've got _this_." Something about the parchment was familiar to Teddy. He remembered Harry taking out a piece of parchment that he'd called a map in order to learn that his mum had gone down to the potions dungeon the first time she'd come to Hogwarts.

" _The Marauder's Map_ ," Teddy read. He looked at the girls shrewdly. "Where'd you get this? This is Harry's, isn't it? He told me his dad and his mates called themselves the Marauders."

Ruby smiled slyly. "You're good." She turned to Rory. "He's dad's son all right."

"I know I am!" he snarled. "And _I'm_ a Hogwarts student. You three are _not_ and have no business wandering the corridors."

Rory sniffed. "Thinking of becoming a prefect? You sound stuffy enough for it. Don't you see? This map shows the entire castle, secret passages, where other people are…"

Nate was holding the parchment and staring at it avidly. "She's right, mate," he breathed, fascinated. "It's _brilliant_."

"You'd still better get back to the others," Teddy said, feeling disgruntled. He'd had a feeling for a while that the twins were planning to include him in a scheme to do something they shouldn't and leave him holding the bag. For months, he'd wondered whether they truly accepted him or were only lulling him into a false sense of security before a sting operation.

"You silly," Ruby said disdainfully. Teddy paid attention to _her_ , since she seldom hid her agenda. "We came to find you to give you _that_ ," she said, nodding at the parchment.

"Why?" He was still suspicious.

"Because you'll need it to carry out the plan," Julian piped.

 _Here it comes,_ he thought. _And they're doing it here, not in Durham where I can only get in trouble with Harry and Ginny. Here I could get expelled._ "I don't care about a plan."

"You will when you hear what it is," Julian said, smiling sunnily.

Teddy looked sideways at Nate as if to say, _He's your brother—do something about him._

"Let us explain," Rory said with mock-patience, rolling her eyes, as though she already _had_ explained it to them and they'd been too dense to grasp it.

"What plan requiring this map wouldn't end in our being expelled?" Teddy demanded.

Rory sighed, as he knew she would. "It's to get into the Restricted Section of the library. Which isn't actually the plan. You need a particular spell to carry out the plan and it's probably not going to be anywhere but the Restricted Section."

" _What_? We could spend _years_ going through every book in the Restricted Section until we find a spell to do what you want. No. Just— _no_."

"You won't need to spend years looking," Ruby said confidently.

Teddy frowned at her. "Why not?"

"Because," Julian piped up excitedly, "all you need to do is find the ones about ex—ex—ex—"

"What?" Nate said, for which Teddy was glad. He didn't fancy showing impatience with his best friend's little brother, whom he'd just met that day.

"What he's trying to say," Ruby told them crisply, "is that you just need to look up _exorcism_."

#/#/#

Narcissa surprised Blaise at breakfast. The first surprising thing was that she was _at_ breakfast, when she usually remained in their bed until past noon looking like a pile of old noodles. The second surprising thing was that she'd been keeping secrets from him, though afterward he realised that that was the last thing that should have surprised him.

"Blaise, darling," she said briskly as she buttered her toast, sounding anything but affectionate. Now she looked like a pile of old noodles that had learned to sit up. "It's high time we got Draco out. It's been over a year since you first proposed the whole insane scheme to me. The spell be damned; I want my son back."

Blaise sighed and put his coffee down. "We've been over this, Narcissa. Repeatedly. There are some books that we can't even open yet because of the protective spells that need to be broken. You've tried it yourself with no luck." _Which isn't saying much_ , he thought. She'd bragged about having seldom done her own work while in school. She usually got boys to do it for her in exchange for promises of favours that she often did not grant. (When she did it was because she wanted to, not because she felt obliged to keep her promise.) She laughed about it still, all these years later, as though she'd been a schoolgirl just the day before. And while it was to his advantage that she thought she was better preserved than she was—he'd been taken in at first, too—it was also increasingly vexing to him. Bolstering the ego of a woman who was starting to look as worn as a crumbling Gothic cathedral was requiring him to throw up flying buttresses of compliments on a daily basis. This was becoming as old as a Gothic cathedral, too. "I'm going through the books as quickly as I can. There's no point if we don't have the spell to—"

"There's no point to my son being _free_?" she interrupted.

"Erm, no, darling, I didn't mean that."

"Because I think the point is that _he won't be in prison_! So what if he doesn't become the next great Dark Lord? Would that be lovely? Of course it would. The power to avenge all of the wrongs we've suffered, to make over the wizarding world so it's as it should be… But I've waited long enough, and so has Draco. Spring is coming and I want Draco to see it as a free man. I'm not waiting until high summer, I don't care how cold the journey will be. No more waiting."

He sighed again and threw his napkin onto the table. "Fine. We'll need to dismiss my elves and your elf, to avoid security problems, and we'll need to do the Fidelius Charm to protect both of our homes, so that if the Ministry work out that it was us they can't find us. That's why I wanted to have the spell first."

She smirked ever so slightly. "How do you know that I won't turn you in?"

He smirked back at her. "Because, my future Secret Keeper, I'll be _your_ Secret Keeper. If you doom me you doom us both." _But I'll find a way to kill you first. If the Ministry are going to punish me for something, I'd like it to be a crime that I enjoyed a great deal, like your murder._

She shrugged nonchalantly. "Just a joke. But—well, I lied."

Blaise sat up straighter. "About what?"

"About the waiting. There will be a little more. First we have to go to Gibraltar."

"Erm, you're a bit geographically confused, darling. Wrong rock. We need to go to Azkaban, up north. And we need time to finish the Polyjuice Potion. Once we find the spell, I'm going to add the final ingredients." He didn't tell her that he already had a large supply of completed Polyjuice. He needed that for himself, and he didn't want to tip her off.

"Well, make loads of it, because we'll need about three or four times as much as you originally thought. And we'll have to have a new batch going at all times."

"As I said, I _was_ going to wait until we'd found the spell—"

"Yes, after living in my house and sponging off me for more than a year," she added, her mouth twisting. "That's _if_ you ever had any intention of getting Draco out of prison. And _if_ this spell ever existed."

"You think I made it up?" _As though I would go through so much to get back into your bed, you dried up old cow._ _"I'm_ the one who had to go to St Mungo's last time we had a problem with one of the books. Do you think I enjoyed that? And might I remind you, it's _my money_ that's kept you from having to sell this house, so I shouldn't mention 'sponging' again if I were you," he growled softly, massaging his left hand with his right under the table. He knew that she was trying to get to him, as the skin on the back of his hand still _squelched_ rather like a sponge and itched when he thought of his ordeal with a particularly troublesome book of dark curses.

She lifted her chin, a challenge in her eyes. "Or _what_?"

Taking a deep breath and counting to ten in his head, he said, "Or it might take even longer to free Draco. All right, I give up. _Why_ do we need to go to Gibraltar?"

She went to the window, gazing out over the grounds of the lifeless estate. "Even though we'll each be the other's Secret Keeper we will need to go out in public now and then—in disguise—and Draco will need to go out in public in disguise as well. Before he acquires the power of those children. Plus we need someone on the inside, in the children's families, to capture the kids and make their parents pay for what they did to Lucius and Draco."

Blaise shook his head, frowning. "You've lost me. I don't see what this has to do with Gibraltar. And why bother with someone on the inside? Isn't that _more_ dangerous? What if they refuse or can overcome Imperius? I don't want a body count too soon. Don't want to tip them off."

"That's why we need the extra potion. One of _us_ will _impersonate_ someone on the inside. We'll use his hair for the potion and keep him prisoner. Don't you remember your Dark Arts professor from your fourth year? Lucius told me that he was actually a Death Eater impersonating the Auror Moody, who he kept prisoner for the better part of a year, using his hair for Polyjuice Potion. It can be done."

 _Technically, he wasn't my professor_ , he thought. "What part of what I just said didn't you hear?" he demanded, rising and going to her. She didn't turn to face him but merely stood gazing at the drab brown lawn and overgrown hedges, as though she could see the estate's former splendour. "If someone goes missing this soon—"

"I heard you. No one will be missing because he's _already_ missing. Has been for years, and assumed dead. Lucius did it. He found it rather more amusing than killing him, but Lucius had a singular sense of humour. He also thought that he might prove useful as a hostage. After what this young man put him through, it also seemed more appropriate than letting him die, even if Lucius _could_ have made it a good, long, slow, painful death."

Blaise grabbed her arm and turned her to face him. "What on earth are you talking about?"

She smirked again. "A certain young man who worked at the Ministry and who fled the country when Dolores Umbridge learned that he was working for _Dumbledore_ ," she said, shuddering at the name. "When he left he didn't cease to work for _him_. He went about the Continent recruiting wizards for 'the cause,' using his old Ministry contacts. Then he simply disappeared and was never heard from again. Lucius was responsible. After he escaped from prison Lucius tracked him down in Andorra—a friend tipped him off. He put a memory charm on him. There was a bit of Cruciatus first, of course, to get information out of him."

"What did Lucius find out?" Blaise asked, finally releasing her arm. She looked like she wanted to rub it but did not.

Narcissa frowned. "Nothing. What do you expect? He was interrogating a blood-traitor. Lucius said he gave pompous speeches about not betraying his friends and family, _blah blah blah_. Torture didn't work and Lucius was bored. He took him off to Gibraltar—no one bothered searching for him there, as far as I know. He put a memory charm on him so that he didn't know his own name, let alone that he was a wizard and a spy. And since they speak English in Gibraltar he didn't stand out, as he would have done if Lucius had kept him in Andorra or almost anywhere else that wasn't Britain. An English-speaking man with amnesia in a non-English-speaking country would be conspicuous. And since keeping a hostage _can_ be a tedious affair Lucius took away his memories and tucked him away where he could do no harm and would be found easily when needed. It turns out that he's still exactly where Lucius left him."

They looked out at the grounds side-by-side, not turning to each other. "If one of us appears to be this long-lost spy, you're certain that we'll be 'in'?" A sceptical feeling still nagged him.

He felt her shoulder move against his as she shrugged. "Shouldn't be a problem. The last time we talked about this _you_ hadn't worked out how to get your hands on the children. I've written to an old friend in Gibraltar. The wizarding community there is rather small and everyone knows everyone else. The Muggle population isn't especially large either and it didn't take him long to track down our blood-traitor. He's a clerk for a solicitor. It never even occurred to him, evidently, to leave Gibraltar. Piece of luck for us. Or it could be that he had no Muggle papers, so he was rather stuck. Muggles are quite obsessed with identification papers. And I doubt that a missing clerk in Gibraltar will have any effect on the wizarding community _here_. Everyone in Gibraltar thinks he's a Muggle and everyone here thinks he's been _dead_ for over ten years. His family should give him quite the hero's welcome."

Blaise grinned; suddenly the barren grounds of the Wiltshire estate had never seemed lovelier and even Narcissa Malfoy seemed less repulsive than usual this morning. "Brilliant, my dear. So, who are we looking for in Gibraltar?"

She smiled at him. "We are going to see a hard-working 'Muggle' clerk called _Weatherby_."

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	32. Ghost-Be-Gone

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Thirty-Two**

 **Ghost-Be-Gone**

 **#/#/#**

Teddy blew out the large black candle cradled in his hands. He heard corresponding puffs of air from Nate and Donna, telling him that they had done the same. The spell that the three of them had cast on themselves before beginning the ritual had allowed each of them to hear what the other two were saying so they could recite the incantation in unison, though they were spread out around their target, forming a large triangle, and were not in earshot of one other. They had found this spell before the one they sought for the ritual and Nate had immediately recognised its usefulness. It had been very handy indeed while they continued their research in the Restricted Section of the library.

Without the light of the candle, the passage in which Teddy sat was grey, eerie, and seemed filled with an abundance of _scuttling_ things that he hoped would stay far from him. The dark didn't usually unnerve him like this. He'd never had a nightlight as a small child. This was very intentional darkness, however. They'd waited months for a new moon that was also on a cloudy night, so not even stars would shine on the castle. It had seemed inconceivable that in Scotland, of all places, it had been difficult to come by clouds on this one night of the month, but for some time, no matter how dismal the weather had been just before the new moon, on the moonless night itself, the clouds inexplicably cleared and stars filled the sky over Hogwarts.

Teddy held his breath, waiting, not knowing if it had worked. One of the most difficult tasks had been to find a book with the complete ritual. More than one volume had been missing bits of it because of charred pages or, once, what looked like a large acid-hole burnt straight through dozens of pages in the middle of the book. The other seemingly-impossible task had been to find spots surrounding their target where the three of them would be in the dark after extinguishing their candles. Large torches burned in most of the castle corridors. The map had helped with that; they had learnt about all manner of secret passages that did not share this attribute, passages in which you had to creep along with your wand lit to see where you were going. These passages all had windows, however, which Donna had speculated might be the reason for the lack of torches, so timing the ritual for the new moon and waiting for clouds had been a necessity.

Darkness enveloped Teddy like a mantle. He almost felt like he would have to peel it off to stand, to move about. _Did it work?_ he wondered. "D'you think it worked?" he finally whispered to the others. "Nate? What do you think? Donna? You've got the map."

"The map doesn't show his sort, remember?" Nate replied, his soft, distant voice reverberating in Teddy's head. Nate was so far away in the castle corridors that he could have shouted at the top of his lungs and Teddy wouldn't have heard him without the aid of the spell.

"I can't see the map anyway," Donna's voice whispered in Teddy's head. "I blew out the candle and it's pitch black. That's what we _wanted_."

"Think we can move yet?" Teddy asked, experimenting with speaking in a normal tone of voice.

"Don't shout!" Nate hissed. "Trying to make my bloody head explode?"

"Sorry," Teddy whispered.

"Yes, that hurt, Teddy," Donna confirmed quietly. "All right, in another minute I'm going to try lighting my wand so I can see the map."

When neither Teddy nor Nate had been able to agree on which of them should have the map during the ritual, Donna had finally stepped between them, grabbed the parchment, and said, "Bloody hell, I'm taking it." After she'd thrust it inside her robes there was nothing to be done. They weren't about to manhandle her to get it back, so that was the end of it.

"Do you _ever_ listen?" Nate hissed more loudly this time and Teddy understood what he meant about shouting as he was coming very close to it. "I _just said_ that the map wouldn't show him."

"I'm not _looking_ for him, eejit, I'm looking for _people_ ," she replied, also having a hard time keeping her voice soft. "So we can sneak back to the common room. We'll just have to wait and see whether it worked, I reckon."

It was silent again as they waited. Finally, Teddy heard Donna whisper, " _Lumos._ " Teddy waited for instructions but was unprepared for what happened next. "Teddy! Nate! _Hide!_ " Donna yelled suddenly, making his head feel like she'd struck it with Thor's hammer. She'd evidently decided to deafen them both.

 _Hide?_ Where was he supposed to hide? " _Lumos!_ " With his wand lit he could see the narrow passage again. Spiders and mice ran from the light as he held it aloft and peered at each end of the corridor in which he stood. There were no hiding places, no alcoves, not even a doorway. Then he saw it: a bobbing light in the distance, coming nearer and nearer. His feet seemed glued to the stone floor in terror, but he finally forced himself to turn and flee.

After some turns, going up and down steep stairs and racing through two other secret passages they'd found that had torches lighting them, so they were unusable for the ritual, he found himself approaching the spot where Nate had been. "How'm I doing, Donna? Out of danger yet?" he panted, hoping he wasn't too loud.

" _Where do you think you're going_?" she hissed. "You'll get caught if you go there! That's where Nate was! And where's he gone? Oh, wait, I see him. He's— _oh no no no no…_ "

" _What_?" Teddy wanted to know, heedless of his volume. He rounded the corner and entered the corridor that had been Nate's spot for the ritual—only to find himself face to face with Professor McGonagall in her nightcap and dressing gown, looking like a tartan volcano about to erupt. He tried to calm his breathing as he said, "Uh, hullo, Professor. I—I can explain…" Only he couldn't, not if he didn't want to be expelled.

A moment later Filch entered the corridor with Nate in a headlock. Nate was turning blue and scrabbling at Filch's arm. Teddy understood why Nate hadn't said anything, since he appeared to be having difficulty breathing, let alone speaking.

"Lookee what I found," Filch said in his gravelly voice, grinning at the headmistress. "Ah, and I see you found t'other. Led me on a merry chase, he did. But I still caught me something," he said, tightening his hold on Nate and making him gasp and put his hands up to his neck.

"Release him, Argus," Professor McGonagall said quietly, as though unwilling to appear _too_ lenient. Filch stepped back, no longer touching Nate, who rubbed his neck and frowned, swallowing. As Teddy looked into the headmistress's flashing, angry eyes, however, he didn't get the impression that too much leniency was going to be coming from her after what they'd done. "Return to your dormitory, Mr Harrison, Mr Clearwater. You know that it is forbidden to be out of Gryffindor Tower after hours. I will inform Professor Potter of your rule-breaking in the morning. Tomorrow—excuse me, it is after midnight, so that would be _today_ —at seven o'clock in the morning you will report to Mr Filch's office for early detention, forgoing breakfast. You will report to him at the end of the day as well. You will do the same—morning and afternoon detentions—every day next week, until you leave the castle for your Easter holiday. Understood? Be in his office _sharpish_ ," she added, sounding rather blade-like herself.

Teddy nodded, resisting the urge to breathe a sigh of relief. She didn't know what they'd done, she only knew they were out after hours. And they hadn't caught Donna. They didn't even seem to know about her.

"Yes, ma'am," they said in unison.

As they walked back to Gryffindor Tower, however, Teddy wondered what would happen when the headmistress learned what they'd _really_ done. When they reached the common room Donna was already there, pacing the floor near the portrait hole, the map clutched in her hands.

"What happened? I could hear you saying, ' _Yes, ma'am,'_ but I didn't want to say anything myself in case you stupidly tried to answer me while you were still with McGonagall and Filch. What happened?" she said again, frantic. The boys both winced. Nate held his skull in his hands as though he had a splitting headache and Teddy thought that one of his mother's migraines would be a lovely change of pace.

"First thing," Nate said decisively, whispering, "is we have to take this spell off. I've heard your voice in my head long enough," he added, speaking to Donna, who stuck her tongue out at him. Once the spell had been removed they sat into the armchairs near the cold fireplace, though for some reason they still felt the urge to speak in whispers.

"Do you think it worked?" Donna asked the boys.

Nate shrugged. "We won't know until tomorrow, will we? At least McGonagall only gave us detention for being out of bed. She didn't ask us what we were _doing_ out of bed."

"What do you think she'll do when she puts it all together?" Teddy asked apprehensively, not directing this at either of them in particular. They hadn't counted on being caught, thinking the map would protect them. _Mrs Norris must have tipped off Filch,_ he thought crossly.

Donna shrugged. "We don't know if we did it. And even if we did, she might not work it out. But if she does…"

The three of them swallowed and were silent. They all seemed to feel that it was better to wait to think about what the awful consequences could be if the headmistress found out that they'd been out at midnight because they were performing an exorcism.

"We should go to bed," Teddy said finally, starting to feel his eyes close. The others agreed and the boys said goodnight to Donna, who took the map with her, a guilty expression on her face, as though she thought she should have detention too. Teddy was glad McGonagall didn't know that she was involved. As he lay in bed, drifting off, Teddy's mind started to conjure up strange images of himself aiming a gun at a ghost and shooting, but when he looked at his victim nothing was there but a white bedsheet with a hole in it.

#/#/#

Harry climbed the winding stairs to the tower flat with a weary step. It had been a very long Friday and he was glad of the weekend, but there was still another week of lessons before the Easter holiday, and each day seemed to last forever. It didn't help that he hadn't seen Ginny at all. He'd missed her during breakfast in the Great Hall, though Theo and Flitwick had done their best to make him smile by telling him the latest outlandish excuses students were using to explain missing work. ( _"I've been learning vanishing spells and must have pointed my wand at my bag without realising it. No, only the homework I did for you is gone…"_ ) He had felt all alone, nonetheless, in a hall with hundreds of chattering people in it.

He missed her acutely during the lessons themselves. Only now that she wasn't by his side did he fully appreciate that she'd always done the fiddly little things involved in teaching, such as reconciling the students absent from Defence against the Dark Arts with the list of students excused from lessons by Madam Pomfrey because they were recovering from illness or injury. She also put the notes and assignments on the blackboard and marked half the essays and exams.

But it wasn't just the increased workload that made him miss her, nor her cleverness. She'd recently said to him, while he was reading and marking essays, "I was going to suggest that you enchant the upper right-hand corner of the parchments so that when you write the mark there it appears in the register, but I reckon you've done that…" He hadn't, but after that he did, feeling like a fool for previously recording all of the marks by hand.

What he most missed was seeing her smile in pleasure when the students made a leap in understanding and learned to do something new, that _They've got it!_ smile on her face, the pride of knowing that the two of them had made it happen or helped it along. He missed sitting with her at lunch in the Great Hall, chatting happily about the morning lessons or about their children. He missed walking up the stairs _with_ her at the end of the day and having tea with Ruby and Rory before putting in a token appearance at the evening meal in the Great Hall, to enjoy some pudding.

He no longer bothered appearing at the head table for any meal but breakfast, usually going back to the flat for lunch, but this day, after handing him a parchment at breakfast telling him that Teddy and Nate were out of their dormitory at midnight, Minerva had told him that she needed to meet with him in her office during lunch to discuss the Carlisle brothers. They were Gryffindors and his responsibility, as were Teddy and Nate. The Carlisle brothers were down to two, the eldest having completed his seventh year the previous June, but their bullying was completely out of hand and something simply had to be done.

And then, after waiting for nearly an hour in Minerva's office and almost missing the start of his first afternoon lesson, he'd left the empty office, highly suspicious as ever of the sleeping headmasters and headmistresses. He didn't know why Minerva should stand him up when she'd demanded his presence, but he assumed that something more pressing had taken her attention. Before he left he told Phineas Nigellus, "Tell Minerva I waited as long as I could. I need to teach a lesson now and can't stay. I _know_ you're awake, Nigellus. Just tell her."

The disagreeable old Slytherin headmaster snorted, doing a terrible job of feigning sleep. Harry rolled his eyes and left.

The only interesting thing that occurred all afternoon was Minerva and Filch _running_ past his classroom several times, looking frantic. Once he thought he heard her say, " _He has to be here somewhere!_ " Harry shrugged, wondering what hell-child was giving them trouble now and hoping that it wasn't another Gryffindor. It was probably the reason for her missing their meeting. If it was a Gryffindor he probably would have heard about it by now. He was starting to wonder whether, by making him head of Gryffindor upon becoming headmistress, Minerva was paying him back for his many after-hours adventures while he was in school. He certainly didn't relish talking to Teddy about his midnight outing, as he had been no saint at the same age.

 _Can't be Peeves,_ he reflected as Minerva went running past again. He couldn't recall the last time he'd seen her move so quickly. While Peeves still made trouble in the castle, he'd actually shown a tendency to be rather sweet to Minerva since Harry's fifth year. Whenever she was seeking him out he became decidedly red and nervous, like a schoolboy trying not to stutter while speaking to the girl he fancied. She was the only one in the school he listened to now. Even the Bloody Baron didn't have the calming effect on him that Minerva did.

It seemed to Harry that he'd been away from Ginny forever when he finally reached the door of the flat and opened it. He found Molly sitting at the small round table by the window with Ruby and Rory as they did their homework. Molly frowned at one of their texts. "Hello, Molly. I didn't know you'd be here." He kissed both girls on top of their heads, ruffling Ruby's hair a little. "Getting a head start on the weekend homework?" he asked. Molly continued to frown at the mathematics text.

"What are kilograms, Harry?" she asked him. "I never can remember…" Harry attempted to explain it to her, with many interruptions from the twins, but he was finally able to break in with an interruption of his own:

"Molly, where's Ginny?"

"Oh! She went into the bedroom some time ago to feed the baby. She asked me to stay in case the girls needed help with their homework." She bit her lip, as though uncertain about whether she was truly being helpful.

"It's okay, Nana," Ruby told her. "If Teddy doesn't have loads of homework maybe he can help us."

"Or Nate!" Rory added.

"No, no," Molly insisted, turning the pages of the book rapidly. "I can _do_ this—"

Harry smiled reassuringly at her. "I'm sure you'll be fine, Molly. And I daresay Teddy and Nate are—revising." He'd almost said _in detention_. He moved toward the bedroom door. "I think I'll see whether Ginny is hungry. We can all have our tea and I can help the girls after that. Don't you want to go home and have tea with Arthur, Molly?"

"I don't need to leave yet. You see to Ginny." She opened the book again, grimly determined.

When Harry reached the bedroom door he knocked lightly but got no response. He turned the knob slowly and entered, finding Ginny curled on her side on the bed, asleep. The baby also slept, curled into the curve of her body, still latched onto her breast. Harry smiled at them both. He gently picked up the baby, a warm, limp weight on his shoulder. He brushed his lips over the vivid red hair, marvelling at how small she was still, even at eight months. _Just like her mother_ he thought, rocking her gently but patting her back firmly, until she finally let out a robust burp in her sleep that made him laugh. He managed to change her nappy without waking her, finally placing her gently in the cot at the foot of their bed, brushing his hand over her hair again. She slept with her right fist thrust into her mouth, which never failed to make Harry smile.

His heart felt full as he regarded her, but, lifting his eyes to her mother, his smile widened. He moved to Ginny's side, sitting on the bed as gently as possible, carefully covering her exposed breast for her and buttoning her blouse. He was surprised when she put her hand over his to stop him, as he'd thought she was still asleep.

"What's the matter, Potter? Am I only a dairy cow to you these days?" she demanded sleepily.

Harry snorted. "Hardly. I didn't fancy your mum coming in to check on you and finding you half-naked. _I_ don't mind you half-naked. Or more than half, for that matter."

She laughed ruefully, struggling to sit. Once she had succeeded she pulled on his necktie and whispered, her mouth an inch from his, "Care to prove it? Charlotte's fast asleep."

As she began running her lips along his jaw, her hand still grasping his Hogwarts tie, he stuttered, "Y-yes, but your m-mum and the twins are in the n-next room, and—"

She picked up her wand from the bedside table, pointed it at the door to lock and Imperturb it, then used his tie to pull Harry's face to hers again. Harry didn't fight her, feeling as frustrated as she was, since most nights recently Charlotte had been screaming until all hours, due to teething. For some reason it seemed far worse than when the twins had gone through it. When Ginny and Harry had gone to both Molly and Madam Pomfrey they'd told the sleep-deprived parents the same thing: taking the edge off the pain was fine but eliminating it altogether was _not_ recommended, so they would still need to cope with some of Charlotte's discomfort. When they'd left the hospital wing, carting the still-howling baby, Ginny had mocked Madam Pomfrey, something she _never_ did.

" _Humans feel pain for a reason_ ," she'd said in a sing-song imitation of the old Healer. "She's not the one who hasn't slept for seventy-two bloody hours. _That's_ pain."

"If we don't do it with my mum and the twins in the next room, who knows when we'll next get the chance?" Ginny said as she started removing his shirt. Harry didn't need a lot of convincing, but he was _so_ enthusiastic that he stumbled while trying to remove his trousers and ended up striking his head on the footboard. He had to pause for a minute, sitting on the edge of the bed, seeing stars, as Ginny continued to disrobe. When his mother-in-law knocked at the bedroom door he jumped.

"Harry? Ginny? You never came back, Harry. I do hope everything is all right."

He cleared his throat, his enthusiasm for this activity waning a bit at the sound of Molly's voice. "Everything's fine, Molly. Just—"

"She can't hear you," Ginny reminded him. "The door is Imperturbed."

Harry sighed and located his wand in his clothes before beginning to dress again.

"What are you _doing_ , Harry?" she demanded.

" _I can't talk to your mum with no clothes on_ ," he whispered. He immediately felt foolish, and he could tell from the expression on her face that she thought this was absurd. He finally undid the spell and said, "Everything's fine, Molly. I'm going to be out in a little while. Can you continue to stay with the girls?"

"Well, yes, but I wanted to check on you because Minerva called on the Floo from her office. She needs you to come right away for a meeting."

He groaned. "I waited for her all through lunch, and _now_ she finally wants to talk about the Carlisle boys?"

"It's—it's not about the Carlisles," Molly said shakily.

Harry frowned. "Some other Gryffindors, then? Who?" He thought about the frantic chase in the corridor that afternoon.

Molly paused. "Yes, they're Gryffindors, but—well, you won't just be going as their head-of-house."

"What are you talking about?" He finished dressing and turned to see that Ginny had put her clothes back on as well, probably as soon as she heard that Harry had to go to a meeting with Minerva. She sighed with a weary and frustrated air.

"Well, you'll also be there as—as Teddy's dad. Both boys' parents are being called. Teddy's and Nate's."

He swung open the door. "What? This is about Teddy and Nate? What have they done now?" As soon as he said this he felt like biting his tongue. He hadn't meant to reveal to Molly that they'd broken rules recently. He wondered why they were out of their dormitory at midnight but he didn't teach the second-year Gryffindors on Friday. _They're supposed to be in detention._ Then he reminded himself that Teddy had managed to get into even more trouble on the second evening he'd spent at Hogwarts, _while_ in detention.

Molly crossed her arms on her chest. "I tried to get it out of Minerva, _reminding_ her that I am Nate's grandmother and Teddy's step-grandmother, but she wouldn't tell me. Severus has gone to get their mums. Minerva sounded _very_ serious," she added nervously. "Oh, if you knew the number of times I was called here to talk to Albus about Fred and George… Even though he was always very kind to me, I was certain that sooner or later they would be expelled."

 _Brilliant,_ he thought. _Thanks for being so comforting._ "I'm sure it'll be fine," he said, not believing this. _This has to be worse than being out of bed at midnight. I wonder what they've done to warrant bringing their mums_?

"I do hope you're right," she said in a wavering voice.

Harry turned to Ginny, his mouth twisting. "I'll find out what's going on. If I'm not back for tea, just go ahead. The girls will be hungry."

Ginny gave him a small smile. "Good luck," she said softly, her eyes disappointed.

"Get some more sleep," he told her. "Before Charlotte—"

But it was too late. The baby had awoken and was bawling piteously. Ginny went to her cot, sighing. Harry left the room, wishing he could help. He kissed the twins on their heads before walking down the stairs to the Great Hall once more, wondering when he would next be able to see his wife without her clothes, let alone do anything about it.

#/#/#

Severus clung to his armchair and stared at Julian as the Knight Bus lurched onto a motorway leading to Birmingham. "You _knew_ what your brother and Teddy Harrison have been up to and didn't tell anyone? Julian, if you hear of someone—even someone older than you—planning mischief—"

The boy looked up at his father with large dark eyes, biting his lip. "Well, that's the thing, Dad. What they did wasn't their idea. It was ours."

" _Ours_?" Severus said, frowning, turning to Penelope. She raised her brows and threw up her hands. This had the unfortunate side-effect of making her fall to the floor as the bus abruptly switched to the High Street of a village that could have been anywhere in Britain. Severus, Julian and Tilda just barely managed to stay seated.

"Don't look at me. I don't know anything about it," Penelope said weakly as she climbed back into her chair, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

"No, not me and _Mum_ ," Julian sighed, as though his father should have known that wasn't what he meant. " _Our_ idea. Me and Ruby and Rory. Actually, it was Ruby's idea. Sort of. Her idea to—to figure out a way to—well, she wasn't sure how to make it happen, but I remembered this film that Mum had gone to see—"

" _The Exorcist_ ," Penelope said, sighing and also gripping the arms of her chair as the bus made a leap to a new village. "He asked me what it was about and I said it was about some people who were being haunted by a ghost who wanted to get rid of it. Which isn't really accurate, but I didn't see a point to frightening him by being more explicit about what happens in the film. It wasn't as though it had any basis in reality."

Severus's frown deepened. "Do you realise what your idea has led to, Julian? There is a reason that the ghosts at Hogwarts have never been exorcised: it is a refuge for them, a haven. Because only witches and wizards can become ghosts it is another way in which we keep our presence in Britain a secret. There are other haunted buildings in the country, but they are the exception, not the rule, because Hogwarts is available to them to haunt without restriction. If the ghosts of Hogwarts no longer feel safe because of this—"

Penelope laughed ruefully. "You told me once, Severus, that you thought it showed a great weakness of mind to want to remain on earth after death, to not accept the end of one's life. Now you're so interested in protecting ghosts?"

She simply did not understand. "I think that one should not engage in the sort of thinking that leads to one becoming a ghost but that does not mean that I think ghosts unworthy of protection. Certainly they should not be put through the experience of exorcism, which by all accounts is quite unpleasant. It is bad enough to condemn oneself to an eternity of merely observing others' lives, but—"

"If I may interrupt," Tilda said, stopping to grunt with the effort of staying in her chair as the bus rounded a curve in the road on two wheels, "does anyone care at all about what is going to happen to Teddy and Nate? What's done is done, and while I can appreciate that the boys are in the wrong, I am concerned about my son. Will the headmistress use this as an excuse to expel him?" she demanded of Severus, her face drained of colour, though he thought that could have been because the bus had just gone onto a verge at the side of the road, forcing a stone fence to leap sideways.

"It was only _one ghost_!" Julian cried. "And they did it for _you_!"

The adults stared. "What do you mean?" his father demanded. "For whom?"

Julian reddened and looked furtively at his father and Tilda, clamping his mouth shut. Severus's eyes moved back and forth between Penelope and Tilda before he said, "Do you want to tell me about it Julian? Just me?"

Julian wouldn't meet his mother's eyes and his face was still quite red. "Okay," he said quietly.

Severus stood shakily, grasping a metal pole, holding out his hand for Julian. "Come," he said tersely. Julian took his hand and allowed himself to be led to the front of the bus, where they took two empty armchairs. As he sat, Severus glanced back at Penelope and Tilda, who seemed offended to be left out.

"Why did the boys go to so much trouble to exorcise only one ghost, Julian? What were they trying to accomplish, and how could it have been for me and for Tilda?" He could tell that Julian hadn't meant it to be for his mother.

He listened to Julian's explanation, two feelings battling within him. One was a feeling that Minerva was _not_ going to think the boys' solution was workable at all. The other was a feeling that if she _could_ be convinced it would be wonderful, it would solve a very large problem that had existed in his and Tilda's almost-relationship for some time.

The big question was: _What would Minerva do?_

#/#/#

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#/#/#

 **IMPORTANT NOTE: I will be shifting to an every-other-Friday posting schedule beginning with the next chapter (rather than every Friday). Do not be alarmed when a new chapter isn't posted a week after this one! REPLAY is continuing, just more slowly. Thanks for reading!**

#/#/#

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	33. A Most Devious Plan

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Thirty-Three**

 **A Most Devious Plan**

 **#/#/#**

"You have thoughtlessly deprived this school of a _valued teacher_ ," Minerva told Nate and Teddy. They stood before her desk, studiously examining their shoes as though they were utterly fascinating, while Severus, Tilda, Harry and Penelope sat in chairs behind the two boys. Julian sat at a low table Severus had conjured near the windows, well away from them, where he occupied himself with a colouring book and crayons. The parents were visibly uncomfortable during this scolding.

"To say nothing," Minerva continued, "of the possibility that other ghosts may now decide to leave the castle for friendlier places to haunt, which could cause the Ministry of Magic a _great deal_ of trouble."

"We never intended that to happen," Nate said in a soft voice. "It was only Professor Binns we were trying to—"

"Yes! A _teacher_!" she exclaimed, spots of colour appearing in her cheeks. "And how do you think I should 'reward' you? What if you had _killed_ a teacher? Do you think that should go unpunished as well? You _as good as_ killed him."

"He was _already_ dead!" Teddy burst out. "And it's not as though he's—he's _damaged_. He just can't come _here_ anymore. There's already one ghost at St Clare's Chapel. Maybe he can go live—erm, _stay_ there. He can keep Moody company."

" _Bloody hell, that's the last thing I need_ ," Harry muttered, rolling his eyes.

"He was _still_ a teacher, Mr. Harrison—"

"And a damn dreadful one," Penelope declared, sitting forward in her chair. "Forgive me, Professor McGonagall, but even those of us in Ravenclaw never learned a thing from him. We read our texts and formed groups to do revision together. But we never got anything from Professor Binns's droning."

"Thank you!" Harry cried, getting to his feet. "Minerva, he may have been my 'colleague,' but he called all of the students by the wrong names when he noticed that they existed at all. He did everything on autopilot!"

"Auto—what?" Professor McGonagall said weakly, confused.

"Automatically," Penelope said. "He was in his own world." She gave a sniff and sat back, her arms folded across her chest. "From what I can see, the boys have done what _should_ have been done a very long time ago. I don't mean actually _getting rid_ of Professor Binns. But if you or Professor Dumbledore had hired a _real_ teacher and sent all of the students to him—or her—and Professor Binns was left to drone away in an empty classroom for an eternity I doubt that he'd have known the difference. Out of respect for a _ghost_ the students of Hogwarts have been neglected _for years_."

Severus caught Tilda's eye. She was clearly outraged. "Is this true?" she demanded, of Severus as much as of Minerva, who did not answer Tilda.

The headmistress looked levelly at Severus, then Harry. "Do all of you feel this way? And others? I've been remiss in my duties to allow the students to continue to be taught by Professor Binns?" Severus recognised the catch in her voice that betrayed her emotions. Minerva was very touchy about being compared to Dumbledore ever since taking over as the head but he rarely saw a chink in her armour. He knew the chinks were there, but Minerva had done her best to patch them over with imperiousness and an acid tongue. His eyes, however, could not help straying to the corner where Julian sat, obviously listening to the adults. In a few short years his son would be a student. Did he want Julian's education neglected for the sake of humouring a ghost?

He met Minerva's eye, his mouth in a grim line. "I am afraid so, Minerva. I also did not find Professor Binns's teaching to be instructive when I was young. For years the only use the students seemed to think his lessons had was as a way for them to catch up on sleep. Which may have been the rationale behind Albus's allowing him to continue to teach—it would be like him—but now that we have no alternative, I suggest that we put our minds to finding an appropriate replacement."

She tilted her head slightly. "With no punishment for the perpetrators?"

Severus shook his head. "Since the second-years have exams next week, I believe that, after the Easter holiday, they should have a fixed amount of detention time each week, to be increased should there be any further— _infractions_." He directed a very stern look at the boys, especially Nate, whom he fixed with his _You should know better_ glare. Nate did not flinch or look away but _did_ seem contrite. Teddy Harrison, however, had a stubborn set to his jaw. _That Potter blood will out,_ Severus thought crossly. _Thinks he should get away with murder._

"Thank you, Severus," Minerva said stiffly, sounding anything but grateful. "Mr. Harrison," she said, a ring in her voice as she announced his sentence; "you shall serve detention with Mr Filch Saturday and Sunday afternoons during the new term."

Teddy dropped his jaw and glared at Severus. He was a reserve Chaser now that he was a second year, though he hadn't played a match yet, as the other Chasers were all in good health thus far. One of them—the captain, who'd been grooming him—was a seventh year whose last match would be the final against Slytherin. Severus knew Teddy would hate to miss it. "But I have practice on Saturdays! And the Quidditch final is—"

"You shall miss the final, then. And you will need to convince Mr Armstrong to hold practices some other day, which I doubt he will do, given his NEWT revision schedule. The detentions will also preclude trips to Durham on the weekends, I'm afraid." Teddy started to open his mouth again, caught Severus's eye, and clamped it shut quickly. Minerva nodded with approval upon seeing that he had decided not to speak again. "You, on the other hand, Mr Clearwater," she continued, turning to Nate, "shall serve detention with Mr Filch every Tuesday and Thursday evening during the new term."

"Then—we're not having detention together, ma'am?" Nate asked softly.

Minerva's lips were very thin and white from being pressed together so hard. "The pair of you have had enough conspiracy opportunities. I do not plan to give you more."

"But it wasn't their idea!" Julian burst out.

All eyes turned to the small boy in the corner. Julian did not cower under the collective gaze of Teddy and his parents, his own parents and brother, and the headmistress, but Severus winced. He hoped that Julian would not reveal—especially in Tilda's presence, let alone Harry Potter's—the motivation for the exorcism. His eyes shifted from his son back to Minerva.

"I think that young Mr Snape and I should have a private conversation," Minerva said, folding her hands on the desk and pursing her lips. Penelope's eyes flashed dangerously. Before she could say anything, Severus sat forward and asked, "May I know why, Minerva?"

She did not regard Severus but smiled benignly at the earnest little boy. "It would seem that your son has something to tell me that may benefit his brother and Mr Harrison. I prefer to hear what he has to say without interference from anyone else."

Severus bit his tongue hard enough that he tasted blood. _Without interference from his parents, you mean,_ he thought.

Nate stepped forward, evidently not thinking that the 'interference' comment included him, Julian's brother. He put his hand on Julian's shoulder and said, "You don't have to do this, Jules. We're okay."

Julian looked up at him in alarm, his dark eyes worried. Minerva regarded the brothers silently for a moment. "Your brother is perfectly safe, Mr Clearwater. He is not my charge yet and nothing he may tell me about his involvement will result in punishment for him. At least, not from me."

Nate still seemed uncertain, but Julian gave him a wavering smile. "I'll be okay, Nate. Don't worry. About _anything_ ," he added, widening his eyes. Severus wondered what _that_ was about. Penelope stood with her arms crossed.

"You're certain?" she asked her younger son.

" _Yes_ , Mum," Julian sighed, failing to keep the exasperation out of his voice. Severus looked uncertainly at Harry, who did not meet his eyes. They filed out of the head's office so that Minerva could talk to Julian. Tilda and Severus went last, after Tilda gave Julian a loving smile that was returned, which made Severus feel rather nervous. Julian was hoping for quite a lot and Severus feared that he would be disappointed, as Nate had been disappointed.

Severus still couldn't quite believe that Tilda Harrison was interested in being with him. He'd been taking Julian to Latere Farm for over a year—Nate going along during the summer, when Teddy was also there half the time. He'd finally decided, on the spur of the moment, to visit her on an autumn weekend when he was not being "the dad." He wasn't certain that he'd be welcome, given that she'd been somewhat hostile to him during his previous Julian-themed visit. However, when she came to the door and he explained the reason for his being there, saying that he understood if she wasn't interested in coming out with him, she'd rolled her eyes, called him, a great clueless pillock with no malice in her voice, and they'd gone out to dinner childless at last.

When Julian next saw them together he could tell immediately that there was a difference between them. Severus was very stern and told him to stop grinning like an idiot, which made Tilda go into protective mode again.

After months of his going to Latere Farm each weekend—finally staying in Tilda's room, rather than the guest room—it became clear that one thing would always stand between them: time and distance. Two things. And the fact that she was a Muggle and he was a wizard, which made three things. They did not have much time together because they lived in different worlds. This made everything more difficult. What he didn't realise until after speaking to Julian on the bus was that his son had been conspiring for some time to give them the opportunity to be together more.

It was an addle-brained idea, Severus thought, and if Julian was telling Minerva about it there was absolutely no doubt in his mind that she would think it mad. He watched Tilda pace nervously, unable _not_ to hope, despite pessimism being his usual impulse.

Minerva finally appeared, asking them all to return to her office. When they were in their previous positions around her desk again, Julian at her side looking like the cat that ate the cream, she folded her hands on the desk and regarded them all with an unreadable expression.

"Mr Snape has told me of the reason for the exorcism. Unfortunately, Mr Clearwater and Mr Harrison, I must tell you that I have no intention of hiring a Muggle to teach something like History of Magic. One can hardly expect even an experienced teacher to handle subject material with which they have no familiarity whatsoever." She nodded at Tilda, who widened her eyes in shock. "In fact, Professor Borodin has been agitating for years to get that position. It is my understanding that he teaches his lessons largely as History of Magic with a bit on the side concerning what he is _supposed_ to be teaching. I have been aware of this and yet I have done nothing about it." She sighed. "However, going forward we shall have Professor Borodin teach History of Magic—I doubt that he will object—so I shall need to find a teacher to replace _him_ , rather than someone to replace Professor Binns."

Nate and Teddy slumped dejectedly. Teddy looked toward his mother, who still appeared to be shocked. Severus saw that Harry was a bit taken aback as well, while, oddly, Penelope appeared to be as disappointed as the boys. "However," Minerva continued, and Severus thought he saw a small smile start to pull at her mouth, "that means that we now have an opening for a teacher of Muggle Studies." Severus gripped the edge of his chair. Minerva looked meaningfully at Tilda, whose hand had gone to her chest as though she thought she might stop breathing. "I understand that you are an experienced teacher, Miss Harrison, and are also interested in returning to the classroom."

Tilda opened her mouth but nothing came out at first. "Are—are you offering me a _job_?" she finally said with a choke in her voice.

Minerva frowned. "I am not certain that I am. I would like you to think about it, though. I shall think about it as well, between now and the end of the Easter holiday. Toward the end of the holiday I shall come to see you so that we may talk about it again. What is clear is that I _do_ need a teacher for the summer term, so even if I do not make a permanent appointment until September there is a vacancy to be filled in the meantime."

Tilda turned to Severus, as if to say, _This could be it, the answer to our prayers._

Harry, however, stepped forward. "Are you sure you'd want to do something like this, Tilda? Getting around Hogwarts castle is hard enough for a first year who hasn't learnt magic. You wouldn't be able to cast spells to get your foot out of trick stairs, or—"

"Mr Filch manages to work here without magical abilities, _Professor_ Potter," Minerva said firmly. "At any rate," she continued briskly, "I have not yet made my decision. I prefer to do so with more than twenty minutes' thought. And I shall consider Miss Harrison's possible difficulties during the deliberation process. There is also no guarantee that if I offer her a job she will accept it. But it is _my_ responsibility to consider the appropriateness of the appointment, not yours. I suggest instead that you have a little talk with _the twins_ ," she added, raising her eyebrows, her eyes moving sideways toward Julian. Harry closed his eyes as though in pain.

Severus bit his tongue, torn between laughing at the expression on Harry's face and saying something acid about the suggestion that Tilda shouldn't work at Hogwarts because she was a Muggle. _He's so proud of being pro-Muggle, so bias can't be the reason. Perhaps he doesn't want the mother of his illegitimate child hanging about?_ But then Severus thought about something else he hadn't considered:

 _Do I want Tilda hanging about with the man she couldn't resist when he was sixteen?_

#/#/#

Teddy and Nate tumbled into the Gryffindor common room. Teddy looked around, frantic, but he didn't see Donna anywhere. Nate immediately knew what to do.

"I'll get the map," he said, sprinting up the stairs to their dorm. Donna had given it back to them that morning. Though Nate was already gone, Teddy nodded, tapping his foot impatiently. Fortunately, neither his dad nor the headmistress had asked them how they had learnt to exorcise a ghost, nor how just the pair of them had managed it without a third person. Though his dad _had_ noticed that his map had gone missing, Rory swore that Harry thought this was his own fault, that he'd simply mislaid it.

When Harry had finally noticed the loss many months earlier, the twins had come home from school to find that Harry had ransacked their room looking for something. He did not tell them what it was. He searched their rucksacks as well.

Ruby said that Ginny mentioned Harry also turning the Defence office upside down to look for something. Neither Ruby nor Rory thought it could be anything other than the map. It evidently had occurred to him that the twins might have once heard him activate and deactivate the map and nicked it afterward. It did not seem to have occurred to him that they had given the map to Teddy. Having searched their rooms—at the castle _and_ in Durham—Harry was convinced that he was still overlooking something. Which, obviously, he was.

Nate tumbled back into the common room from the stairs, half-concealing the map in the sleeve of his robe. " _She's in the Owlery,_ " he hissed at Teddy.

"Good," Teddy responded quietly, turning toward the portrait hole again—only to discover a rather large _chest_ in his way.

It was, unfortunately, attached to Craig Carlisle, now in sixth year. His little brother, who was no longer very little and was the other bane of Teddy's existence, stood beside him. Teddy groaned inwardly, not being in the mood to deal with the Carlisles. He was liable to be goaded into something that would land him in detention for his entire third year, in addition to already being in detention for the remainder of his second year.

He was completely unprepared for what the elder Carlisle did next: he grinned ear to ear and threw his arms around Teddy, giving him a crushing hug, after which he hugged Nate, who looked like he was going to choke or spew, it was hard to tell which. When Carlisle released him, Nate was as white as a sheet, backing up nervously from the brothers.

"You did it! You got rid of Binns!" And then Carlisle said the scariest thing of all:

"You lads are my new mates!"

The unnatural sight of the usually-surly Carlisle faces wreathed in smiles was extremely unnerving to Teddy. He fought the urge to back up, like Nate, in case they took offence.

"Erm, well," Teddy said uncertainly as the enormous Craig Carlisle slapped him on the back hard enough to make his teeth rattle in his head.

"No more Binns!" the younger Carlisle—Dirk—exclaimed loudly next to Nate's ear. The Carlisles summoned everyone in the room to the portrait hole, where they heaped praise upon Teddy and Nate, causing some older students to congratulate the pair of them, which even included girls kissing them on the cheeks. Then Caroline Gibson and the rest of the girls in their year came over, some of them also hugging Teddy and Nate. Nate's face was even redder than when the older girls had kissed him. Teddy felt his face grow hot when Caroline's lips barely touched his face. Enika Fujita stood by bashfully, her cap of black hair brushing her cheeks as she smiled at them.

Nate finally said, "Oi! We appreciate this but we were going up to the Owlery and _still_ need to go. We'll be back, we promise!" The crowd finally agreed to release them.

As they walked upstairs, Nate said to Teddy, "So, you going to take up Carlisle on his offer? Be his best mate?" Nate grinned ear to ear, clearly doubting that this was a risk.

"Erm, well, first off I won't be letting him do my homework," Teddy said, grimacing. "I'd like to get passing marks, thanks."

"'Course you can't tell _him_ that. You'll have to say—you don't want him to get in trouble if someone finds out. That's it. And then there's Craig's offer to smuggle us into the village for the next Hogsmeade weekend…"

"That's easy. Every Saturday I'll be in detention. And in September we get to go to Hogsmeade without sneaking out. We won't owe him." That was the real reason the Carlisles made Teddy uneasy: he didn't like the idea of being in their debt. He sighed as they climbed more stairs. "They're not going to stop, are they? They're going to keep trying to do us _favours_ ," he groaned. "I think I liked it better when they were trying to get us expelled. I'm not sure what they'll come up with next as a—a—what would you call it?"

Nate looked thoughtful. "A _gesture of friendship_ ," he decided, then pursed his lips. "You've got a point."

"And then there's Caroline…"

Nate grinned. "Poor Ickle Teddy. Hottest girl in our year coming after you. Whatever will you do?"

Teddy swallowed, picturing Enika sitting on the other side of the common room, reading, always looking in his direction whenever he seemed to be looking in hers…

"Good question," Teddy said, not happy about Caroline. _She's pretty_ , he thought, _but she's not the sort of girl who…_ He couldn't put it into words, even in his head. Any boy in his right mind would fancy Caroline. She always looked flawless. She even made Hogwarts robes look fashionable—something about the way she made hers _drape_. But he never knew what to say to her, whereas he'd had more than one conversation with Enika, nice ones.

"I noticed Liza hanging all over _you_ ," Teddy said, to shift Nate's attention.

Nate snorted. "She'll forget about it tomorrow. I'm not falling for that anymore."

"What, the _I-forgot-to-bring-my-Transfiguration-homework-and-could-I-use-yours_ thing?" Teddy couldn't help laughing.

Nate sighed. "And the _oh-I-forgot-to-bring-my-Charms-essay_ song and dance, and the one for Herbology…"

Teddy laughed again as they reached the Owlery. "I didn't know about Herbology. _How_ many times did you fall for that?"

Nate stopped, his hand on the door. "Only three times, which was three times too many. Don't rub it in. I feel like an idiot. I kept _hoping_ she'd be nice about it after. Probably had a good laugh with her friends."

Teddy felt more cheerful as he entered the Owlery but stopped abruptly when he saw Donna sitting in the dirty straw she'd banked against a cold stone wall, rolling up a piece of parchment as tears trickled down her rather blotchy face. "Donna! What's wrong?"

Her thick glasses were in her lap and without them she looked like a different person. She raised shining eyes to them, running her sleeve over her face to dry her tears. "You don't expect me to stay here if the pair of _you_ are leaving, do you? It's not like I have any other friends. Caroline, Olivia and Liza have seen to that."

"What?" Nate said, clearly confused.

Donna gave a great sniff. "I'm writing to my mum to tell her that we should see the headmistress at my sister's school during the holiday so I can go there when the new term starts. There must be something Professor McGonagall can do to convince her that I've been going to a proper school."

Nate dropped his jaw. Teddy shook his head at him, frowning, but Nate ignored him. "Have you been hit by a _stupid stick_?" Nate demanded. Teddy slapped his arm with the back of his hand, since it would be harder for him to ignore _that_.

Donna started coughing. "What?" was all she could croak when she regained her voice.

"What Nate is _trying_ to say," Teddy told her, glaring at him, "is that we weren't expelled. We've got loads of detention, but she didn't kick us out."

Donna put her glasses on. "You're serious? You're not leaving?"

She scrambled to her feet, but before she could come near them Nate was backing toward the door. "No more hugs!" he said, looking at her with trepidation.

"Nate!" Teddy said, chastising him. "Have you been hit by a _rudeness_ stick?"

"I—I just meant—Carlisle, erm, doesn't know his own strength."

Donna snorted. " _Carlisle_! Ickle Natie got a hug from _Carlisle_. Which one?" she added between snorts.

Nate grimaced. "Does it matter?"

"Well, should I be singing _Dirkie and Natie, sitting in a tree_ , or _Craiggy and Natie, sitting in a tree?_ "

"Shut up," Nate growled.

"Can't you take a joke?" she laughed.

"Maybe you _should_ go back to Muggle school, so _we_ wouldn't have to put up with you!" he snarled, turning on his heel and slamming the Owlery door behind him.

Teddy and Donna looked at the door. "He's just—well, you know. We thought we were going to be expelled and now we've got detention until we go home again in June," Teddy tried to explain.

Donna shook her head. "He's cross with me. Because I didn't get detention."

Teddy frowned. Nate hadn't said anything about this and he realised that his words might have given her that impression. "No, it's not."

"Then, what?" she demanded. Teddy shook his head dumbly, unable to put his suspicions into words. Donna went on, "I didn't get caught. I'm not having months of detention. Didn't they ask who else did it? Don't they know anything? They should have known—"

"They didn't ask. I'm _glad_ you didn't get caught," he told her earnestly.

Donna looked at him suspiciously. "Are you certain? After your sisters and Nate's brother came up with the idea in the first place, you two didn't want to do it. I talked you into it!" She sighed and ducked her head. "No wonder he's cross. It's all my fault."

Teddy rolled his eyes. "Stop it! You didn't hold a gun to our heads. We wanted to—" He stopped abruptly, remembering what Professor McGonagall had said. "Bloody hell, Donna!" he breathed softly, the shock hitting him. "It—it _worked,_ " Teddy breathed.

"Of course it worked," Donna said, as if Teddy were slightly dim. "That's why you and Nate got called to the head's office."

"No, I mean—my mum might actually come here to _teach_. But not History."

"Huh?" She took off her glasses again to clean them on her robes, looking disoriented as she squinted at him. He explained it to her.

"That's _fantastic_! Listen—a Muggle Studies teacher isn't just going to fall into McGonagall's lap during the Easter holiday. During the summer one might, if she looks. But even if she does hire someone else for September, at least during the summer term you'll get to see your mum more often!"

"And so will Professor Snape," he added quietly. He'd known Snape for nearly two years and while he was initially shocked at the idea of his teacher going out with his mum, it was, in some ways, less shocking than learning that Harry Potter was his dad. He'd never liked his mother going out when he was younger but he was working on getting over that. His mum deserved to be happy. He couldn't very well talk about any misgivings around Nate, however, who'd wanted Severus Snape to be his stepfather when he was younger and thought that Teddy would, of course, feel the same.

"Can't believe it worked!" Nate whispered excitedly while they got ready for bed that night. "Your mum and Severus will be able to spend more time together. And Julian will be over the moon if—" he trailed off, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. "So if he becomes your stepbrother, I'll get to keep visiting you whenever _he_ does and it'll be nearly like _I'm_ your brother, too." Teddy had enjoyed having both Nate and Julian come to Latere Farm the previous summer. And Nate had come to visit him at St Clare's once during the summer, too.

"If I'm not visiting my dad," Teddy cautioned him, climbing into his bed.

Nate shrugged. "Speaking of which, Donna and I can still visit you in Durham during the holiday, yeah?"

"I reckon. I'm going home first, then to St Clare's Chapel."

Nate grinned. "Bet your sisters'll be thrilled about the plan working."

Teddy hadn't thought about this. "Yeah, probably."

#/#/#

" _Eeeeeeeeee_!"

Teddy failed to anticipate the excited squealing that would take place when he saw his sisters during the holiday. They did it every time they were in the house alone with Teddy, always waiting until Harry and Ginny were doing something like going to meet Nate and Donna at the train station. He felt like he would go spare. " _Shut up_ , will you?" he begged, his hands over his ears as the girls bounced in a circle, squealing. He finally lost it.

"That's it. Up to your room. I can't take any more. Half an hour in your room, now, and no squealing when you get out. I _mean_ it. I'll carry you if I have to," he growled.

Giggling madly, they put their heads together, looking at him while they whispered. He didn't like the looks of _that_ at all. "On second thought—you go to your mum and dad's room, Rory, and you go to your own room, Ruby. _Don't touch_ anything in their room, Rory, or they'll know, and they won't blame _me_. Go on!"

He envied Nate, with his one little brother, sighing as the girls went up the two diverging staircases to the church's former balconies, which housed Harry and Ginny's bedroom and bathroom on one side, plus a nursery for Charlotte, and the twins' and Teddy's bedrooms and bathroom on the other. The choir loft, still with the old organ and pipes, functioned as a library, both linking and separating the bedrooms.

Having had piano lessons when he was younger, but dropping them when he grew bored, Teddy had the sudden urge to try the organ while the girls cooled off. Only one register worked and the noises the pipes emitted were unpredictable. When he played a scale it sounded like a random selection of deep and high notes. Giving up on the organ, he settled in an armchair, the Crup at his feet, with a random book from the library shelves: _The Dark Lord's Fall_ , which turned out to be about Harry, to whom the author had written a long note of thanks on the inside cover. The author had probably sent the book to his father, gratis. Teddy couldn't picture Harry going into a bookshop and paying for it.

After reading a little about his father being the Second Coming he abandoned the book and found some Quidditch magazines. The players flew about in the photographs, demonstrating the moves being described. While he was reading these the time passed quickly and he didn't realise that the half-hour had stretched into an hour. When he checked his watch, he wondered whether the girls had fallen asleep.

Deciding that they'd been punished enough, he went to get them. He didn't usually mind his little sisters and mostly found them amusing. If his mum came to teach at Hogwarts it would be due to them. He just wished they wouldn't _squeal_.

Going to Harry and Ginny's room first, he found it empty. He looked around quickly; an indentation on the bed showed where Rory had probably been sitting. She wasn't in the adjoining bath or in the nursery, either.

 _Probably went back to their room,_ he thought. He didn't mind that he hadn't known; she'd at least been quiet. He was starting to feel restless, though, itching to try some of the moves he'd seen in the magazines. Harry and Ginny allowed them to fly—very carefully—around the huge old sanctuary that held the drawing room and dining area, above which there were no rooms. They had to mind the sloped ceiling on the sides and avoid the copper chimney winding up from the square central hearth, but that was part of the challenge. The roof trusses were very convenient for sitting on, to rest. Harry and Ginny flew with them sometimes. When Harry gave Teddy a broom the previous summer, so he could try out for the Gryffindor team, he couldn't wait to see Teddy fly and wanted to show him some tricks and moves he thought might help him. Soon Harry, Teddy and the twins were flitting around the enormous space while Ginny watched from the couch with the newly born Charlotte in her arms. The twins had been flying for years.

Teddy smiled so much that day that his face actually _hurt_. He didn't learn until Ginny and the girls gave Harry some presents that evening that Harry had given Teddy the broom on his own birthday, which made Teddy feel guilty that he didn't have a gift for him. Charlotte had been born a week earlier and Teddy had brought a stuffed bunny for her, but no one had clued him into the second family birthday. He'd apologised to his father at bedtime. Harry suddenly hugged him, backing up quickly, looking embarrassed and saying, "Seeing you fly—that was my gift."

Teddy had found it very hard to resent him or even dislike him after that. His Durham visits were becoming less awkward to the point that Harry and Ginny even occasionally asked him to babysit the twins, paying him handsomely (in his choice of Muggle or wizarding money). This was Ginny's idea, since she said that her older brothers had never been paid for watching her and Ron and she didn't think it fair to just _expect_ this of an older sibling. He was glad that they'd taken Charlotte with them, though. He liked her but didn't fancy changing nappies.

"Rory!" he called when he emerged from Harry and Ginny's bedroom.

" _What_?" came a distraught, teary reply from the girls' room. He found her sitting on the floor at the foot of her bed, arms wrapped around her knees while she rocked back and forth, crying. Where she'd had her face against her jeans the fabric was wet.

He ran to her, going to his knees. "What's wrong?"

She pointed mutely at the leaded casement window above the beds, which was wide open. He looked back at her. "What? Did Ruby fly out the window?"

She shook her head, pointing at the two smallish brooms leaning in the corner. After hiccoughing and attempting to swallow, she choked out, "Gone. Looked. Everywhere. Window. Wasn't. Open. Before. Someone. Must. Have—"

 _Damn_. He went to the window, remembering a conversation between Harry and Ginny that he'd overhead on his first visit. It was about whether they needed to continue to keep anti-Apparition jinxes on the house and grounds. Harry insisted that they did, not giving Ginny a reason. _This is the reason_ , he thought.

Teddy stared out the window, his heart in his throat. All he could see was the road to Barnard Castle and the old overgrown graveyard, grey stones thrusting up through the tall grass and waving wildflowers.

There was no sign of Ruby anywhere.

#/#/#

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 **NOTE: Remember, new chapters are now every other Friday. Do not be alarmed when a new chapter isn't posted a week after this one. Thanks for reading!**

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	34. Hide and Seek

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Thirty-Four**

 **Hide and Seek**

 **#/#/#**

Blaise Zabini handed his wand to Kingsley Shacklebolt, who put it into a long gold-coloured tube. The tube spoke in a tinny voice:

" _Teak with dragon heartstring, in use for forty-two years, seven months. Last spell performed: shaving facial hair, approximately two hours ago._ "

Shacklebolt raised his brows and Narcissa frowned at him. Blaise said quickly, "It's my dad's old wand. A couple of years after he died, mine broke, and his was still in his old study, so I took up using it." Shacklebolt nodded and took the wand from the tube, but looked askance at Blaise when he held out his hand to have the wand returned to him.

"Visitors are not permitted to take wands into the cells." A large honeycomb was mounted on the wall behind him and he placed Blaise's wand into one of the openings. "Your wand, madam?" he said abruptly to Narcissa Malfoy. She drew her lips into a line and mutely handed it over, wincing as the tinny voice described it:

" _Beech with unicorn hair, in use for thirty-eight years, seven months. Last spell performed: changing hair colour from grey to blonde, approximately two hours ago_."

She seemed like she wanted to snatch the wand away again but was restraining herself. Shacklebolt nodded, glanced at her hair, said, "Good job," and also put her wand into a small hexagonal pigeonhole. Blaise started to move toward the doorway, but Shacklebolt stopped him. "You've got to be searched now," he informed him. "Procedure."

Blaise sighed and stood stock-still while Shacklebolt patted him down, including patting down each leg individually. When Shacklebolt came to Blaise's robe pockets he recoiled in surprise.

"What is _that_?"

"Sorry. Most of the time he just sleeps. I forget he's there sometimes," Blaise apologised, taking a rather long albino ferret from his pocket. "He's rather old now. Had him since I started at Hogwarts. It won't be a bother to have him with me, surely?"

Narcissa frowned. "How could you bring that—that _thing?_ You know how Draco hates ferrets!"

Blaise did know, and took a certain satisfaction in selecting this animal for their mission because of Draco's hatred for it. "He'll never see it," Blaise said, trying to pacify her, pleased with her performance in front of Shacklebolt. _Not that I didn't already know what a talented actress she is._ "Honestly! He never gave a damn about it when we were in school. Told me to keep it away from him, that's all. Which I shall. Winston'll be sleeping peacefully in my pocket and Draco shan't be the wiser. And at any rate, he's more likely to, erm, 'react' to our _news_."

"News?" Shacklebolt said, raising his eyebrows. Blaise returned the ferret to his pocket and Shacklebolt did not object. "Is that why you're visiting him earlier this year, Mrs Malfoy?"

Narcissa turned pink. "I know there's an _age difference_ , but even though Blaise was in my son's year in school, I've become quite fond of him, and telling Draco that I'm going to be marrying again hardly seems like the sort of thing to put in a letter."

A smirk played around Shacklebolt's mouth. "I see. Of course, Mrs Malfoy. Erm, I still need to search _you_."

"Right," she said, standing with her legs together and her arms lifted from her sides. Blaise thought Shacklebolt might be _blushing_ as he patted down Narcissa. He did it very briskly, not dawdling over any one area, and when he was crouched before her, patting down the outsides of her legs through her robes, he made no move to separate her legs so that he could pat them down individually. He stood again quickly, nodding at them both.

"Riley will take you to his cell. He's been moved. It's his turn to be on the south side. A little warmer and sunnier. When we get sun up here. He seems to like it."

Narcissa gave him a frosty smile. "How lovely," she said, "that his prison cell has a _southern exposure_. I'm certain that that makes up for _everything else._ "

Shacklebolt's good graces had been exhausted by her sarcasm. "Go on then. You only have half an hour," he said gruffly. "Riley!" he called. A red-headed Auror in his mid-twenties appeared at the door to the anteroom and nodded to Blaise and Narcissa, who followed him silently.

As they walked behind the Auror, the North Sea wind battered the corridor windows, making them rattle in the frames. Blaise was glad that Dementors no longer guarded the fortress, not only because it would have been far more difficult for them to get Draco out. He hated Dementors and hoped that the Ministry had found some way to get rid of them once and for all. He'd never heard what had become of the former Azkaban guards, though, and still sometimes had nightmares about them.

When they reached the cell, Riley said pointedly, "I'll be dropping by from time to time," directing this at Blaise in particular.

Blaise nodded and smiled ingratiatingly. "Of course, of course. We understand."

Narcissa had told him that the guards didn't give visitors thirty minutes of uninterrupted time with a prisoner, so he'd planned to explain everything to Draco first, watch for a passing guard, and follow that with the actual execution of the plan. Thus far everything had gone well, including Shacklebolt failing to search Narcissa completely. Blaise was grateful that, for nearly ten years, her behaviour had been beyond reproach during visits, as it made this one far easier. He was also glad that their cover story was the announcement of their engagement. Not only was Shacklebolt rather distracted by this, he was now aware that he was searching Narcissa's body in front of her fiancé, which seemed to have affected his judgment. Everything was going swimmingly.

Sitting on a slim bunk with a nearly flat mattress, Draco Malfoy jerked his head up when he saw them. Narcissa had told him that Draco received regular haircuts, but Blaise was pleased to see the evidence of this himself. _Good, very good. Makes it easier_.

"What the hell are _you_ doing here?" Draco growled upon seeing Blaise. He got to his feet. "And Mum—you're visiting me before the summer? What's the occasion?" His voice was tinged with suspicion. A moment later, looking back and forth between his mother and his former schoolmate, the reason for the visit dawned on him, causing the little colour in his face to quickly depart. " _No._ Oh, no no no…"

Blaise turned and smiled feebly at the Auror who'd brought them, as if to say, _This won't be easy._ The Auror smirked and left. As soon as he seemed to be out of earshot, Blaise turned to Draco and whispered, "I was going to explain this to you properly, but I doubt that we have time, so I'm going to do this instead." With that, he went to his knees before Narcissa and lifted up the hem of her robes.

"Oi!" Draco cried out indignantly. "I'm _right here_! Get your hands off my mum!"

He moved forward but Blaise had already detached the wand that had been magically glued to the skin on the inside of Narcissa's right thigh, pointing it at Draco. First he used it to quickly cut off some of Draco's fair hair, which fell to the dirty floor. Another wave of the wand removed Draco's dirty robes. Before Draco could complain about having his hair cut and being in his underwear, Blaise pointed the wand at Draco again, performing the spell wordlessly, so there would be no way for a passing guard to hear it. Immediately, Draco was replaced by a long, white ferret that was the twin of the animal in Blaise's pocket. Draco started running toward the bed but Blaise wordlessly summoned the new ferret into his left hand and gave her son to Narcissa.

"It's all right, Draco," she whispered, struggling to hold the squirming animal.

Blaise took the other ferret out of his pocket, placed it on the mattress, and pointed his wand at it, thinking, _Finite Incantatem!_

A man in his late twenties sat before them, his pale hair and eyes the exact same colour as Draco Malfoy's, though his features were slightly different. Blaise was very pleased with the substitute. He'd met the young wizard while they were in Gibraltar and had immediately been impressed by how similar his and Draco Malfoy's looks and build were. He'd searched throughout Britain without being completely satisfied with anyone he'd found. He was starting to think he should make a trip to one of the Scandinavian countries or Germany to find a near-double for Draco Malfoy. A Swiss tourist in Gibraltar, however, saved him the bother. With a memory charm and Imperius, he was docile as a lamb. Another wave of the wand and the Swiss wizard was wearing Draco's old prison-issue robes, while his holiday clothes from Gibraltar sat in a pile on the floor where the robes had been. Blaise quickly vanished the clothes before kneeling again before Narcissa to replace the wand against the skin of her thigh. Draco continued to writhe in agitation.

Blaise stood back from the bed, admiring the effect of the blond man in the robes, squinting a bit as he did so. Anyone who knew Draco well wouldn't be fooled, but they were going to be leaving him with a supply of Polyjuice potion with Draco's hair in it. (It had been secreted in a vial between Narcissa's breasts.) If there was a danger of close contact with anyone, the decoy was under orders, aided by Imperius, to take some potion, but otherwise it was to be conserved.

The potion was the main reason Blaise had had so much trouble finding an adequate substitute. Centuries earlier, ministries across Europe had mutually agreed to ban any potion that could affect a Muggle, to curb the trade in potions wizards had previously sold to Muggles. All potions had to be reformulated to only respond to a magical person, and Blaise didn't have access to a Polyjuice recipe that would affect a Muggle. That limited the pool of people Blaise could draw on for a pseudo-Draco. After the blond wizard exhausted the potion, if he stayed away from the door, faced the wall or huddled under the blanket, there was a good chance that Draco's escape wouldn't be discovered for quite a long time. Ideally, no one would have any idea that Draco Malfoy wasn't still in Azkaban until he had made his debut as the next great Dark Lord.

Blaise smiled at the Swiss wizard, whose name he had not bothered to learn. It did not matter; he would need to learn to answer to a new name.

"Hello, _Draco_."

#/#/#

Harry turned off the rented car and got out, going to the boot for the bags while Ginny removed Charlotte from her seat with Donna's help. While Harry had reluctantly agreed, after being badgered by the twins, to rent a car during the Easter holiday, he was now glad of it, as it made bringing Nate and Donna to the house far easier. He could magically expand the interior to accommodate his own four children as well, without running afoul of Misuse of Muggle Artefacts as long as he thoroughly removed the spell before returning the car to the rental agent.

Nate took his bag plus Donna's and they entered the house in a disorganised, laughing crowd, dropping the bags on the entry's stone flags while Hades leaped about them, barking excitedly. "We're home!" Harry called as he threw himself into his favourite chair by the fire. Nate had visited St Claire's before and made himself at home in a chair on the other side of the hearth. Hades jumped onto his lap, while Donna looked around with wide eyes.

"You have such a _cool_ house, Professor Weasley," she said to Ginny.

"Thank you, Donna. Although, during the holiday, I think it would be all right to call me Ginny. I'm only 'professor' at Hogwarts. Teddy calls me Ginny. There's no reason for you not to do the same." Donna looked at her in grateful surprise, as though she thought Ginny was pretty 'cool' for suggesting this. Ginny put Charlotte on the rug and gave her a basket of blocks, which Charlotte started banging together happily. Donna sank onto the floor beside her.

"What do you want to build, Charlotte? A tower?" Donna asked her in a soft sing-song.

Ginny smiled at them before walking up the three shallow steps to where the chapel's altar used to be. The kitchen now occupied this space, overlooking the dining room. "We thought chicken kebabs for tea. That suit you, Donna? Nate?"

The only answer she received was a choked sob from above. Ginny stared up at the door to the girls' room, which was open. Harry leapt to his feet and also stared up. Donna and Nate looked at each other uncertainly. Charlotte had crawled into Donna's lap and was using her legs and chest like a toddler-sized armchair, still banging blocks together. Donna put her arms around Charlotte protectively while Harry and Ginny raced up the stairs, Harry in the lead.

They found Rory sitting on the bed, her face tear-stained. Teddy paced the floor, his face drained of colour, running his hands through his hair. Harry was about to ask what was going on when he noticed the open window. He swore under his breath.

"Bloody hell. Not _again_."

#/#/#

Draco paced the drawing room restlessly while Narcissa tried to calm him. He _hated_ the desolation of the once-elegant house. He'd pictured it in his cell as it used to be, an appropriate home for a family of their blood, money and (former) stature. Now it appeared to have been abandoned after a natural disaster. It certainly didn't feel like _home_. There weren't even any elves to wait on them. They'd become too _expensive_. What was the world coming to? His mother also said that they were a security risk. It was illegal to put loyalty and confidentiality charms on them now. They were already breaking the law by helping Draco escape from prison and didn't need to draw attention to themselves unnecessarily. Blaise had also fired his elves.

"Draco, you wouldn't be free if it weren't for Blaise," she said, trying to placate him. "No one is the wiser. There's been nothing about a prison break on the Wireless or in the _Prophet_. No one from the Ministry has contacted me or Blaise. _Nothing_. As far as they know that's _you_ in the cell. They're clueless. We did it!" Her smile was anything but infectious, however.

"I don't like being cooped up," Draco whinged, kicking a battered ottoman he could have sworn used to be in the attic. "I've been cooped up for _ten years_. Is the new batch of potion ready yet? How could you use so much to get me out of prison and go to Gibraltar for my wand? And why can't I break it in by getting the information we need? I don't care if he becomes a blithering vegetable. Getting revenge on the Weasleys is part of the _point_."

"If he becomes, as you say, a 'blithering vegetable' before we learn what we need to know it could be difficult for you to impersonate him. Unfortunately, your father put the memory charm on him and only he could remove it safely, without damaging—"

"The Dark Lord never cared about 'damaging' anyone. Father _told_ me. Sounds like it would be fun. If Zabini wants to make me the next Dark Lord he could _listen_ to me. I might as well be in prison yet—he does whatever he pleases. Who's in charge?"

"He does not do 'whatever he pleases.' He's buying Boomslang skin from a source that can't be traced to us. At any rate, Blaise was telling me this morning—"

"… _in bed, very likely,_ " Draco muttered darkly, still pacing restlessly.

"—that he had found a way around the memory problem. It's another potion. He's supposed to meet someone in Knockturn Alley."

" _Another_ potion?" He slammed his fist onto the marble mantel. He had a feeling that if his mother couldn't think of a way to get money other than sleeping with Zabini the mantel would be next to go. She'd have it ripped off the wall and shipped off to a Muggle antique shop. "Or is this another way to stall? Are you positive Zabini isn't just—just _using_ you?"

His mother laughed, unnerving him. He'd always avoided making her laugh because it was such a disturbing noise. She no longer seemed quite herself and he didn't want to subject himself to the sound again if he didn't have to.

"Of _course_ he's using me. He knows that I'm using him as well. It goes both ways. I used him to get you out of prison, didn't I?"

"I'm out. End of story. Can't we send him packing?"

"Stop whinging, Draco. In good time. Do you want him to go to the Ministry? Now, I'm still not convinced about this spell, but there's no harm in letting him continue to look. If he finds it, _think_ of the possibilities."

"But what's the _point_ of me pretending to be Weasley? And getting this other potion? Why can't we live in Gibraltar, or _anywhere_ else? I like Gibraltar," he said, a whine creeping into his voice again. "It's _warm_." He took out his wand. "And I like having a wand again. Can I test it by torturing our prisoner? Or Zabini?"

"No, you cannot. Have patience. Even if we don't find the spell you can still avenge your father. Or you could be the next Dark Lord."

Draco grimaced and shrugged. "Maybe. Can't we just _kill_ the kids and go live in Gibraltar? Being a Dark Lord sounds like—"

"—work? That's what Blaise is for, darling. The work."

Draco tapped his wand on the marble mantel, idly changing it from a rosy colour to grey to white to green. "Yeah, which makes me wonder—why isn't _he_ interested in being a great Dark Lord himself and getting someone _else_ to do the work?"

#/#/#

Teddy looked at his dad, incredulous. " _What_ did you say?"

Ginny glared at Rory, her hands on her hips and her face very stern. "Aurora Potter, how _dare_ you!"

Teddy looked back and forth between his stepmother and sister in utter confusion. "How dare _she_? What are you talking about?" He paused, taking a deep breath. "It's—it's all my fault, Ginny. I—I sent Ruby to her room and Rory to yours, to separate them, and when I was going to tell them that they could come out again—"

" _Quiet_ ," Harry hissed suddenly. Teddy froze, thinking that Harry and Ginny were the strangest parents _ever_. Harry closed his eyes and seemed to be meditating. When his eyes opened again it was so sudden that it jolted Teddy. Harry looked fiercely around the room, his gaze resting on the wardrobe. He strode to it in a trice.

"I _looked_ in there," Teddy said, gulping and trying not to cry. _I'm nearly thirteen_ , he reminded himself. On the other hand, he'd never before felt responsible for his nine-year-old sister disappearing. He'd never known that it was possible to feel this terrible.

Harry pulled the wardrobe door open and rustled the clothes about before pulling out—nothing. Nothing that Teddy could see, anyway, and yet he could tell that Harry held _something_ that squirmed and shifted in his grip. Finally, Harry grasped what seemed to be _air_ and pulled. A silvery cloth fell to the floor and Ruby appeared, her hair tousled and her eyes wide with fright.

"It was just a joke, Dad! Honestly!" Ruby whinged as he dragged her to the bed and made her sit beside her sister. Rory's tears had dried and she too looked frightened.

Ginny and Harry were livid. "You are to _apologise_ to your brother _now_ ," Ginny said in a low voice. Teddy looked at them in shock while Harry folded the silvery cloth. Rory looked like she was trying not to laugh.

"Sorry, Teddy," they said in unison.

"This is no laughing matter, Rory!" Ginny informed her, taking her daughter's hand from her mouth so she couldn't cover her smile. "It was bad enough that you pretended to know nothing about this the last time—"

" _Last time_?" Teddy echoed.

"Yes," Ginny snapped, turning to him. Shaking herself, she said, "Sorry," in a kinder tone. "Harry was out with Ron and Hermione and I was all alone. I called Harry to come back and that's when we finally found Ruby. Harry worked out that Rory was playing the role of the distraught sister and was in on it _all along_ ," she added, glaring at Rory, who appeared to be trying to become part of the flowered pattern on the duvet.

"But—how did he work that out? And how did he find Ruby just now?"

Harry put his arm around Teddy's shoulders and steered him toward the door. "Never mind. We're very sorry that the girls did this and we'll be giving them a talking-to now. Tea will be a little late, I'm afraid." He turned and fixed the twins with an ominous glare. "And _some people_ will not be _having_ their tea."

Teddy returned to the drawing room, where Nate and Donna waited. "What on earth happened?" Donna wanted to know. She was still holding Charlotte, the chubby little arms around her neck.

Teddy grimaced, eyeing Charlotte and wondering what mischief she'd be cooking up in a few years. "Little sisters, _that's_ what happened."

#/#/#

Narcissa sighed. "Be grateful that you're out of prison, Draco. And think about how satisfying it will be to pull the wool over the Weasleys' eyes, and the Potters'."

He nodded. "All right, all right. But why do we have to let _him_ wander about?"

"He can't get out. Don't worry. He doesn't even _want_ to. He doesn't remember being a wizard, either. He's been quite helpful. Thinks he works here. Rather a good butler, in fact, now that we have no elves."

She rang a bell; a moment later a tall, thin man with red hair and glasses appeared in the doorway. "Yes, ma'am?" he said, giving her a small, formal bow.

"Weatherby, I know it's late, but please serve breakfast to Draco in the dining room."

"Yes, ma'am," he said again. After another bow, he left.

Narcissa smiled. "And for now, we have the satisfaction of ordering him about."

Draco hoped she wouldn't start laughing again. "But when the potion is done I'll look like _that_ when I go out."

"You _will_ , however, be _able_ to go out. Look on the bright side."

"The bright side," he scoffed. Draco still didn't like the convoluted plans Zabini harboured and didn't trust him. He missed his mates, Crabbe and Goyle. He also didn't fancy 'becoming' Percy Weasley just so he could be the next great Dark Lord. There _had_ to be a better way. But he took the path of least resistance for the moment and went to the dining room to eat his breakfast, drawing some satisfaction from the fact that the former Head Boy was waiting on him, pulling on his forelock and toadying like a Muggle servant afraid of being turned out without references.

#/#/#

Tilda Harrison nodded discreetly to Severus Snape in the entrance hall as he turned to descend the stairs to his dungeon. She began to climb the marble stairs, a bounce in her step. Her good mood was partly due to the lovely breakfast she'd just had, during which she was able to see Teddy smiling and laughing with his friends, plus she and Severus were able to sit beside each other at the head table and quietly discuss plans for the weekend. Her cheerful mood was also partly due to her first day of teaching at Hogwarts being a complete success. The students were thrilled to have a Muggle teaching them about how Muggles actually lived and they were all very nice. She had taught only the sixth and fifth years, in the afternoon.

She had been marvelling at how very polite and well-mannered magical children were when she'd been eating her dinner beside Severus the previous evening. He'd made a sceptical noise, continuing to chew. She laughed and said that it probably helped that her students didn't attend their lessons in a dungeon as it very likely made them better-tempered. He made another sceptical noise but she hadn't let him ruin her enthusiasm for her new job.

The students did it for her.

She opened the classroom door and stared around in shock at the empty room. The polished wood floor stretched away before her, pale marks showing where the bookcases and teacher's desk had stood, previously unmoved, for decades, possibly even centuries. Then she looked up.

Each student sat at a desk, spines straight against the backs of the chairs, hands folded on the desks, their texts, parchment and quills at the ready. Girls with long hair even had it flowing down their backs. Which was odd, because every last piece of furniture had been magically attached to the ceiling of the room and every student was sitting _upside down_ in his or her seat, every hair in place as though they were _not_ defying gravity. Every book, quill and parchment followed suit, clinging to the desks as though glued to them.

Tilda Harrison covered her eyes with her hands, sighing. Collecting herself, she walked to the blackboard, where the law of gravity was still functioning properly. Pieces of chalk sat peacefully in the tray, showing no signs of wanting to be on the ceiling. She behaved as though everything were perfectly normal as she wrote notes on the board. When she had finished she faced the class, tipping her head back to look up at them.

"First—every one of you is to report to Mr Filch for detention tonight, eight o'clock sharp. Second—anyone who gets a drop of ink on this floor will receive another detention for each drop, understood? If you can magically attach yourselves to the ceiling you can keep your ink on the parchment, where it belongs. No excuses."

She taught the entire lesson from the floor while the students sat on the ceiling, though she noticed a few of them rubbing the backs of their necks as though they were in a bit of pain from the angle that they had to force their necks into in order to see the blackboard, since the writing was upside-down to them.

Luckily, she did not have to teach another lesson until the afternoon. When the bell rang, she told them, "I'm going to the staff room and shall notify Mr Filch of your detentions. I expect every piece of furniture to be _on the floor_ when I return and each of you is to write a two-foot long essay entitled _Why it is Rude to Sit on the Ceiling While your Teacher Stands on the Floor_."

She turned on her heel and left, her heart beating very fast and her mind racing with fury. _They're testing me,_ she told herself as she strode through the corridors, fuming. At the staff room door she couldn't remember the password.

"Um," she hedged; " _Euphrates. Epicurius. Elephantes. Euphrates_ …"

"You said that one already. All wrong. Try again," the gargoyle sneered, leering nastily at her. She wanted to take the mace from the suit of armour standing nearby and smash the ugly stone carving to bits. Just when she was feeling like her willpower had been exhausted and she _would_ grab the mace, the door opened and Harry and Ginny emerged.

"Is everything all right, Tilda?" Ginny asked. Tilda knew that she probably looked murderous. She _felt_ murderous.

"I—I just couldn't remember the password," she managed to say through gritted teeth. "I know it begins with an E, and I could have sworn _Euphrates_ would do it."

"Oh, that. It's _Eridanus_. But you weren't far off with _Euphrates_. They're both rivers," Ginny said brightly, as though determined not to be unnerved by Tilda's demeanour. "Of course, one's also a constellation," she added awkwardly, looking back and forth between Tilda and her husband before frowning at Harry.

Harry's arms were crossed and he looked rather smug and superior. "What happened?" he asked in a mock-innocent voice, as though expecting that _something_ had happened. Tilda explained the students-on-the-ceiling problem as calmly as she could. Harry's smirk grew as he listened. She wanted to slap it off his face. "Not as easy as you thought it would be, is it?" Harry said when she was done. "When you taught me, I was the only magical kid in the school, and when I performed magic it was accidental."

"Oh, shut up, Harry!" she snapped, turning to the gargoyle and shouting, "Eridanus! Are you bloody happy now?"

As she stormed into the staff room she heard Harry behind her, asking Ginny, "What did I say?"

#/#/#

After Tilda wrote a tersely-worded note to Filch about the detentions for the upside-down class, she tried to relax with a cup of tea from the teapot in the middle of the large staff room table that constantly replenished itself. Someone had left a copy of _The Daily Prophet_ on the table but she had to put it down, giving up on anything in it feeling remotely normal to her. Even the adverts were very queer:

 **Spellwork Lost Its Fizz?  
Charms Gone Stale and Droopy?  
Then you need...  
** **MAGI-ME-MORE!** **  
Losing power and concentration as you grow older?  
Roll back the years with Magi-me-More.  
One daily pill and you will be transfiguring like a wizard of twenty!**

 **Healer's warning: side effects include dizziness, vomiting and tusks.**

She felt like the newspaper itself should have had warnings about dizziness. She felt a bit lightheaded just from watching the words of the advert flash across the page, multi-coloured stars and fireworks exploding behind the name of the product. _At least reading the paper probably won't make me vomit or give me tusks,_ she thought ruefully. _Probably_. On second thought, she decided not to push her luck.

She _had_ noticed with interest a story about Hermione Granger being back at work after having her baby—Teddy told her that Hermione and her husband had come to Easter dinner in Durham. Hermione had also placed an advert in the classified section to find work for some house-elves who had recently been released from employment by very old wizarding families. She thought she recognised one of the names. _Perhaps it's a name from this morning's register?_ Moving photographs of the elves were included.

She tried reading through more of the set text for the Muggle Studies course, which she hadn't gone through completely during the Easter holiday. The author had many strange misconceptions about Muggles and she wondered whether the wizard who'd written it had ever _met_ a Muggle after she'd read several chapters that were supposed to be about the late twentieth century. (The earlier chapters were more about the historic split between Muggles and wizards.) She didn't notice the time until the bell rang for lunch.

She left the staff room, giving the gargoyle a glare as she passed, and walked right into a tall girl clutching a lot of books and parchments to her chest, causing her to drop her belongings to the floor. Tilda immediately went into a crouch beside her, helping her to pick up her things again, thinking at the same time that the girl looked vaguely familiar.

"I'm terribly sorry. I didn't see you," she apologised as she handed the girl a Dark Arts text and a Transfiguration book. The girl immediately looked stricken with guilt.

"Oh, don't say you're sorry! _I'm_ the one who should be apologising to _you_ after—after that dreadful prank we played this morning!"

She stood again, clutching the precarious collection awkwardly. Tilda gently took a few of the parchment rolls from her that were threatening to get away again. "Here, let me carry these. I'm going down for lunch. Are you?"

The girl nodded, still looking quite abashed. Tilda glanced at her glossy brown hair, remembering a girl who was sitting halfway back in the upside-down class that morning, her long hair flowing down—or up—her back. As they walked down the stairs, Tilda said gently to her, "I'll be fine. It isn't as though any of you put a spell on _me_. But I really can't have disruptions of that sort when I'm teaching a lesson, let alone such a display of disrespect, so—"

"Oh!" the girl said quickly. "I'm not trying to get out of my detention! It's no more than we all deserve." Tilda was concerned. The girl looked like she was on the verge of tears. Tilda patted her arm. "There, there. We'll start fresh next time. I don't remember your name—I just read the registry without really noticing who was responding."

"Jessica. Jessica Sommers. Is it true that you taught at a primary school?"

Tilda smiled at her. "For years. I'm not exactly new to the classroom."

Jessica nodded. "I feel so ashamed. I should have talked the others out of it."

"I told you, I'll be fine."

"But see—my dad's a teacher. If he knew I'd gone in on something like this he'd have my head. He's the history master at his school. Down in Wiltshire." They started down the marble stairs leading to the entrance hall as Jessica sighed. "It's bad enough that he thinks I'm utterly dim. At least I've always behaved in school."

Tilda stopped dead. "Why should he think you dim? Did he say that? That's dreadful!" The girl seemed to be perfectly articulate and intelligent, though she'd had the bad judgment to be overly influenced by her peers, none of whom had joined her in apologising, Tilda noted.

"Oh, no, not as such. It's just that I write the worst essays. I have a mental block about it. I can never remember the rules for spelling certain words, and I always mix up my verb tenses. I'm awful at it and whenever I ask Dad for help it seems to end in a row."

"Because you have difficulty with something he finds perfectly natural?" Tilda felt a horrible anger toward the intolerant history master father. Jessica nodded.

"So, I was wondering, I know we were horrid to you, but—but I have this History essay that Professor Borodin assigned yesterday. He taught Muggle Studies before you. He _hates_ my essays. Gives me rubbish marks on all of them. So far I've only managed to pass Muggle Studies by knowing a load of things during the oral exam—mostly because I'm Muggle-born, which isn't an advantage in History of Magic. Anyway, I was wondering whether you could—well, whether you had any time to help me a bit with my writing," she finished quickly, as though afraid that she lacked the nerve if she didn't blurt it out. "No one _teaches_ that here, we're just expected to be fine with producing essay after essay. And most of the teachers aren't strict about spelling and grammar, but Professor Borodin _is._ "

Tilda stopped just as they were entering the Great Hall. "Of course I can help you! Why don't we both get some sandwiches. For something to drink there's a pot of tea in the staff room. We can go back up there and see what you've got so far. I'm sure it's not as bad as you think, and even if it is—well, don't worry about that now. Stop fretting. It'll be all right, yeah?" She patted the girl's shoulder reassuringly and was rewarded with a wavery smile.

"Thank you, Professor. I know I've no right to ask for a favour after this morning—"

"Oh, rubbish. You need help and no one else is offering, are they? I don't teach many lessons, after all. I only do half as many as Professor Nott and I don't need to take care of all of the creatures living here at the school like Professor Grubbly-Plank. Frankly, I've been wondering what I'm going to do when I'm not teaching and marking assignments. So—first sandwiches and then to work, all right?"

Jessica smiled broadly. "Thank you! Oh, look, there's ham and cheese today."

Tilda walked with her to the Hufflepuff table, where they selected some food. She nodded briefly to Severus on the way and he nodded back from his seat at the high table. Taking it upon herself to carry their food when it became clear that Jessica couldn't add this to her current burden, they walked back upstairs. Jessica's chattering was growing less inhibited by the moment.

Tilda thought, _Perhaps there's a place for me here after all._

#/#/#

 **Please be a responsible reader and review.**

#/#/#

 **NOTE: Remember, new chapters are now every other Friday. Do not be alarmed when a new chapter isn't posted a week after this one. Thanks for reading!**

#/#/#

Listen to **Quantum Harry, the Podcast,** available on iTunes, Stitcher and on the **Quantum Harry** YouTube channel. Subscribe today!

You can also follow me on Twitter **QHPodcast** and/or Instagram **bl_purdom**.

#/#/#

 **Note:** Those who visited JK Rowling's old website may recognise the MAGI-ME-MORE advert from the "Rumours" section of the site (only available on the full-graphics version, rather than the text-only version).


	35. Homecomings

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Thirty-Five**

 **Homecomings**

#/#/#

Blaise grinned at Draco's shock. "You said you missed your mates. Don't say I never did anything for you. Other than getting you out of prison, of course." Draco shook Crabbe's and Goyle's hands, feeling like things were finally looking up. They talked for a while about what they'd been up to, but Blaise cut it short, saying, "The reunion is fantastic, lads, but we have work before us. I've offered jobs to Crabbe and Goyle. They're quite interested in being in the inner circle of the next Dark Lord."

Draco raised his eyebrows. "We're ready for an inner circle?"

Blaise shrugged. "When the potion is ready you'll need to have all of the information in your brain to successfully pretend to be someone else _and_ you'll need more than one person helping you keep up the act. Better someone you already know and trust than new faces, don't you think?"

Draco nodded at Blaise and his friends. "We're ready to start grilling him?"

"Yeah—after a little _experimentation_ , to make sure this will work."

Draco frowned. "Experimentation?"

Blaise smiled ingratiatingly at Crabbe and Goyle, then pulled out his wand and pointed it at them both, saying, " _Obliviate!_ " Draco was startled.

"What did you do that for?" he demanded of Blaise, who displayed extreme unconcern for the glazed-over expressions on Crabbe's and Goyle's faces.

"We need to test whether the extra-strong Veritaserum will truly bring out memories that have been suppressed through a memory charm. I've only erased their very recent memories—a few minutes at most. Your dad erased a man's _lifetime_. We have our job cut out for us. We need help and help has come," he said, waving his hand at the disoriented Crabbe and Goyle.

#/#/#

"When did you meet Penelope Clearwater?"

Percy Weasley seemed to be staring into space but he answered Draco automatically, "The first day of my third year. Ancient Runes. She asked to borrow a quill."

"When did you start going out?" Draco Malfoy asked him.

"First Hogsmeade weekend of my fifth year. We had lunch at The Three Broomsticks."

"Did she let you kiss her?"

"We snogged behind Honeydukes for half an hour. We were told off by Filch for being late getting back."

Draco grinned lasciviously at Crabbe and Goyle. "So much for the angelic former Head Boy," he said in an aside to his friends. He knew that they were enjoying listening to the interrogation after the weeks of experimentation they'd gone through. The only flaw they'd detected in the plan was that after Crabbe and Goyle had answered questions about things that had been erased from their memories, having given the answers to the questions they immediately regained the memories and would have needed to be obliviated again to forget the experience of being interrogated.

They didn't want Percy Weasley to remember being interrogated. As 'Weatherby' he was unlikely to run away or attempt to contact anyone outside the house. Overall, the possibility of Percy regaining his memories was worrisome to Blaise and he regretted that he would have to layer memory charm upon memory charm. He was afraid that eventually he'd be unable to extract any information from him at all. He also knew that a Percy Weasley aware of his true identity and history was a dangerous Percy Weasley.

"When did you and Penelope Clearwater first shag?" Draco asked, a leer on his face.

"Sixth year. We met in the dungeons. Afterward I ran into your friends. Crabbe asked me what I was doing down there and I was afraid they'd guessed that I'd been meeting Penelope, since she'd left before me and they might have seen her, so I told them to go to their dormitory. Then you showed up and asked them where they'd been and what I was doing there. I told you to show more respect to a prefect."

Draco nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I remember."

Crabbe scratched his head. "That's funny—I don't. I don't remember that."

Draco looked alarmed. "What do you mean you don't remember?" He whirled on Blaise Zabini. "What did you do to Crabbe? I thought you were only taking away memories that were just a few minutes old when you were testing the potion?"

Goyle raised his hand nervously. "Can I say—I don't remember that happening either?"

Blaise Zabini frowned. "The charms I put on the pair of you should _not_ have affected memories of your second year of school. That's rather a long time ago. Hmmm." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and regarded Percy Weasley, who stared blankly into space.

"All right. We've got some information. You were supposed to be writing," he said, nodding at Crabbe. "Did you get everything he said?"

Crabbe held up the parchment. "The quill got it."

"Good." Blaise ran his hand through his hair, frowning. "Okay, you," he said to Percy. "What're you called?

Percy held his breath, concentrating. _It's just like overcoming Imperius. It's just like overcoming Imperius_. "Weatherby," he responded at last, very slowly, still staring at nothing.

"Hmm," Blaise said quietly. "Interesting. Stands to reason your dad put something a bit stronger than a simple memory charm on him, I reckon," he whispered to Draco. Percy pretended to be staring into space still. "He did get rid of years of memories, after all, not just a few minutes." He eyed Percy again. "Good!" Blaise said suddenly, clapping his hands. "All right, Weatherby. We're hungry. Please make us lunch. Mrs Malfoy is probably hungry as well. Have it ready in half an hour, in the dining room."

Percy stood and gave a slight bow. "Of course, sir."

He walked away from the drawing room, where they were doing the interrogations, breathing a sigh of relief that they hadn't put another memory charm on him. As he moved around the large old-fashioned kitchen, heating a large pot of soup, he felt like his brain was going to explode from the information he'd absorbed during the interrogation.

 _I'm Percy Weasley. My name isn't Weatherby. I'm a wizard and I'm being held prisoner here. One of them is going to impersonate me and is getting information about my background so that he can do that._ He found some parchment used for making grocery lists, a quill and some ink, and set about frantically writing down everything he could remember saying about Penelope, about his family…

He thought about the Penelope-questions that made him _really_ remember her, especially the reason for being down in the dungeons in his sixth year. He clutched at the edge of the table, unable to see clearly at the thought of one of _them_ touching her, pretending to be him. He wasn't sure how he came to lose most of his memories and he didn't know how much he still didn't remember, but he was damned if he was going to let any of them near Penelope. Being asked about her had helped him to remember more: he could picture her long, curly brown hair, her face, and he could even remember a bit of what her voice sounded like.

If he was to retain his memories they had to believe that when he wasn't under the influence of the potion he didn't remember what he'd said, that he still believed himself to be _Weatherby_. Or he had to make certain that he wrote things down before they wiped out his memory again, putting the parchment someplace where he would find it but they would not.

And when he had recovered and _kept_ enough of his memories, he needed to find a way to escape his prison and make his way back to his life.

His _real_ life.

#/#/#

Tilda Harrison sat before Minerva McGonagall's desk, wishing she could sink into the floor. "I've never had a problem maintaining order in the classroom before. But—the students seem to think, just because I'm a Muggle—"

"—that they can get away with murder. I know," Minerva said grimly.

"I understand if you want to hire a new teacher. I haven't had a very good term."

Minerva looked at her sharply. "I'm not sacking you."

Tilda swallowed and blinked in confusion. "Aren't you?" She had been feeling uncomfortably like she was back in Old Soberley's office, attempting to explain Harry's presence on the roof of the school kitchens.

Minerva made a scoffing noise and frowned. "No, I am not. I think that you've had rather a good term, all things considered. You've faced some challenges that Hogwarts teachers don't usually need to—"

"—because I'm not a witch. Yes, I know," Tilda sighed, remembering the day of the students on the ceiling, which was far from the only prank that had been played on her.

"—and you've risen admirably to those challenges," Minerva said, ignoring Tilda's attempt to finish her sentence. "You've also shown yourself to be quite helpful to the students who require extra tuition in non-magical subjects, which is something I'd like to expand upon in a more official capacity when the new term begins in September."

Tilda's jaw dropped. "You _really_ want me to come back?"

Minerva smiled. "I do. To impress upon the third- and fourth-year students that they _cannot_ take advantage, prefects will sit in on those lessons. It seems that the lack of trouble with the older students is due in part to the presence of prefects."

Tilda nodded. "I still think I should be able to maintain discipline myself."

"You have no reason to feel ashamed. We can even look into a long-term solution such as putting charms on the room to make it impossible for them to pull pranks. However, I believe that the tutoring will also help in its way." She leaned forward in her chair. "Believe me when I say that we do not wish to lose you, Professor." She fixed Tilda with a steady gaze through those square-rimmed spectacles. "I believe that another professor in particular does not want Hogwarts to lose you," she said gently.

Tilda frowned. Did she mean Severus? Did this mean that Minerva did not disapprove of their relationship?

She received the answer to her silent question very quickly. "He should be waiting for you outside my office, in fact," Minerva said, smiling at her benevolently. Standing, Minerva extended her hand to Tilda, who shook it, a wave of relief washing over her. "You have passed your probationary period and are officially a Hogwarts professor, Tilda. Welcome and congratulations," she added, squeezing Tilda's hand and smiling.

When she left Minerva's office she did indeed find Severus waiting for her. The students had already departed the castle for the train station. Severus was going to escort her home on the Knight Bus. Teddy would get the bus home from London much later. Severus had assured her that it would be perfectly safe for Teddy to do this on his own.

"I have a job in September."

She saw the pleasure in his eyes and in the way the edges of his mouth _almost_ curled upward. "Good, good," he said, very subdued. "Are you packed? The carriages will be back from the village soon. Or I could levitate your trunk and we could walk to the village before getting the bus to the farm."

"Does that mean that you're spending your holiday at the farm? Your whole holiday?"

He nodded as they walked down the stairs. "If that's all right with you."

"All right with me? I _invited_ you and you've been hedging about it for ages!"

He swallowed and wouldn't look at her while they walked. "That was because, well, I didn't know whether…if things didn't go well for you here…"

"What?" she said, coming to a halt. She thought about Minerva's words: _…another professor in particular does not want Hogwarts to lose you._ "Severus, are you planning to ask me to marry you?"

He looked both stricken and caught-out. "Wh-what? Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Something Minerva said. And—something Penelope said to me once. And something Julian said. And Nate. And even Teddy. Ginny also."

"Is _everyone_ we know planning to do my proposing for me?" he demanded, his face acquiring some colour. He froze, realising what he'd said. Tilda laughed at his expression but a moment later his face clouded over and he turned away crossly.

She ran after him. "Severus! _What_?"

He stopped so abruptly that she ran into him. He whirled on her. "That's fine. Laugh at me," he spat. "I've had a lifetime's worth of experience at being laughed at. I'm very good at it. I can see now that all I'm useful for is your temporary amusement."

" _What_ are you talking about?" When he started to turn away from her, she grasped his arm and made him face her again. "No, you don't, Severus. You do _not_ say such a ridiculous thing and turn away from me. You think I'm _amusing_ myself? What, do you think I'm with you because I think you're _pretty_? I'll have you know that I don't think any such thing."

He nodded. "Thank you very much. On top of everything else I quite needed more insults to my appearance. That tops off my day very nicely," he sneered.

"Don't get shirty with _me_. You know what I mean, even though I put it badly. I mean—no. You're not the most gorgeous man I've ever seen. I think you look—interesting. _I'm_ interested in you. Do you think I'd be with you if I was _repulsed_ by you? So you've got that—that nose. And hair. So what? Look at _my_ hair. I must have three times as much grey as when you met me. And the crow's feet beside my eyes, and the lines around my mouth. We're not young, either of us. Nor glamourous. I don't give a damn what you look like. I'm not in love with your looks, I'm in love with _you_ , dammit, and if you don't propose to me I may bloody well propose to you, so if you want to feel like the scales have been balanced and reject me, fine, do it if that will make you feel better, but don't you _dare_ accuse me of toying with you!" she finally finished, breathless, flushed with both anger and excitement, unable to believe that she was daring to say these things and yet unable to stop herself.

"What?" he said, staring, and she felt a faint sense of accomplishment from reducing _Severus Snape_ , of all people, to near-speechlessness. She tried to soften what she'd said by stepping toward him and putting her arms around his neck.

"So, I reckon the answer to your question is—no. Everyone we know is _not_ going to be doing your proposing for you." She dropped her voice to a whisper. "Just me."

He swallowed and looked down at her uncertainly, but he put his hands around her waist before saying, "You're certain about this?" He had a look in his eye as though there was a definite right answer to this question and a definite wrong answer.

"Quite certain," she said, marvelling that she was managing to keep her voice steady.

A slow smile—a rarity on his face—pulled at the corners of Severus Snape's mouth.

#/#/#

Ron Weasley watched the kids pour off the Hogwarts Express, scanning the crowd for his nephews and finally spotting them. Teddy and Nate were shaking hands, preparing to separate for part of the holiday before the visits would begin. Ron looked around at parents greeting their children, thinking of the day when his kids would be here, but glad that they weren't yet. His boys—and now one girl—were much more _fun_ than he'd ever dreamed, and Luna was effortless in her management of the kids, the house and her father's office. He couldn't believe he'd come so close to ruining it all. He thought of Percy again, as he did whenever he saw Nate, wishing his brother could have seen his son. He watched Teddy move off into the crowd and strode to where Nate was waving after him.

"Uncle Ron!" Nate said in surprise when he saw him.

"Your mum asked me to pick you up. She has a surprise back at the flat and didn't want to leave. I was already here anyway, covering a story at the Ministry."

"Cool! So can we take the Knigh—"

" _No_. Taxi. Your mum's orders." He laughed when Nate's face fell, taking his trunk from him and walking toward the barrier. "Come on, then."

In the taxi, Nate chattered about the term and Ron found it hard to resist using magic to float the trunk up the stairs when they arrived at his building, but between the two of them they managed to get the job done without spells. At the door to the flat, Ron shook Nate's hand. "Have a good holiday. You're coming down to Durham, yeah? Luna and I'll bring the kids round and we can have some fun. A spot of Quidditch?"

Nate grinned at him. "Brilliant! Thanks for picking me up, Uncle Ron. Wonder what Mum's up to?" He took out his key and was about to unlock the door when they heard the latch opening on the inside. Then Penelope swung open the door and they got the shock of their lives. Standing beside her was a tall, thin, red-haired man with glasses. Penelope grinned excitedly and enveloped Nate in a tight hug.

"Darling! The most exciting thing—" She backed up and put her arm around the man's waist while he put his around her shoulder and looked at Ron and Nate, swallowing.

"Hullo," he said slowly. He seemed nervous.

"Your father is back!" Penelope exclaimed.

Nate and Ron stared open-mouthed at Percy Weasley.

#/#/#

He stared and stared at his mother and the man beside her, his arm around her shoulders. _This is just not on_. _Doing this when I've just arrived home for the summer. It's not fair._

"Um, that's brilliant," he said, forcing himself to smile. He knew he was supposed to be happy for them, he _knew_ this, but he was having a very difficult time getting past the fact that his life was going to be forever changed, that his mother was going to have _him_ permanently attached to her, _legally_ attached.

"I know! Isn't it?" his mother said, grinning up at the man who would be his stepfather.

Snape was actually _smiling_ at his mother. Almost. As much as he ever smiled. He definitely looked more cheerful than usual, as he wasn't _scowling_ , which was his usual expression in the Great Hall, in the corridors, and in the Potions dungeon.

Teddy felt like his own smile was frozen in place as they chatted about a wedding at the farm during the Christmas holiday. _I'll have to call Nate. If I don't do it right away he'll think I'm not thrilled, like he would be. Or like he thinks he'd be. I bet Nate wouldn't be thrilled at all if his mum surprised him with a new dad out of the blue._

#/#/#

"You—you're my dad?" Nate asked, his voice squeaking a little.

The red-haired man looked at Nate's mother as if waiting for confirmation. She nodded, smiling broadly, and the man cleared his throat and said, "So your mother tells me."

His Uncle Ron let out an elated cry and sprang forward, throwing his arms around his brother as Nate's mum enveloped him in another hug. He permitted her this brief indignity, though he would be fourteen on Hallowe'en and he was the same height she was now. He turned nervously to his father—he was _finally_ meeting his father!

Percy Weasley looked taken-aback at being hugged so enthusiastically by his youngest brother. Ron separated from him, brushing down his clothes and apologising for his excitement. "Sorry to jump all over you. Wait until Mum finds out! She was over the moon about _Nate_ , but _you_ —!"

"Yeah," Percy said shakily, looking a bit green. "Over the moon," he echoed. Turning at last to his son, he extended his hand. It seemed to Nate that this was to avoid more hugging, which was fine with him. He liked his uncle, who wasn't nearly as undignified as his grandfather, but Ron was more informal than Nate usually liked to be. _Maybe I got that from my dad_ , he thought for a fleeting moment. While the informality was probably helpful to Ron, the _Quibbler_ reporter, in Nate's book civilized people shook hands.

"I'm glad to finally meet you, sir," he said solemnly, making his mum laugh. He wished, however, that she wouldn't tousle his hair as though he was six years old.

"A real chip off the old block, yeah?" his mother said.

 _My father_. It was so strange. His father was supposed to be dead, but now here he was, with his mother hanging off him and laughing at _everything_ and _my father is alive._ Nate felt a little dizzy. "How—how did—"

"Let's sit," his mother said in her new, high-pitched, excited voice. "He's already told me everything, but of course you'll both want to know—"

"—what the hell happened?" Ron finished for her, running his fingers through his hair as they walked to the kitchen. "I mean, we no sooner find out that you're a spy than Dumbledore ships you off on some assignment, and then back-to-back, we get the news that you've disappeared and no one knows the last place you'd been and—"

They sat at the small kitchen table. "I'll tell you what I remember, but it's still a bit fuzzy," Percy Weasley said slowly before Penelope popped up again.

"Tea! I'll make tea. Oh, bother," she added suddenly, opening a drawer and removing her wand. Nate had only seen it a few times in his life. She waved it impatiently at the teapot and it started emitting steam. "I like it better the slow way, but—"

"—but you're feeling impatient," Percy finished for her, with a nod and a slow smile.

She smiled back. Nate had _never_ seen his mother so happy. Even though he'd wondered about his father for years, the sudden change was jarring. He was starting to understand Teddy's hesitance to accept Severus and his mother as a couple. As though his best mate had read his mind long-distance, the phone chose that moment to ring.

"I'll get it," Nate said, glad for something to do. He went to the phone mounted on the wall and picked up the receiver. "Hullo," he said into it.

"Uh, hi, Nate. It's Teddy. Just thought I should call you. Thought you should know—"

"Know what? I just saw you on the train. What's happened that you need to call me already? Not that you can't, I'm just—"

"My mum is engaged. To be married. She and Sn—I mean, well, you know who—"

"You-Know-Who? _What_?"

"No, stupid, not _that_ You-Know-Who."

"Oh, right. Got it. Erm, when?"

"Christmas holiday. At the farm. Anyway, thought you should know. Got to go."

Before Nate could respond, Teddy had rung off. Nate hung the phone on the wall and sat again. _Well, Julian will be happy_.

"Who was that?" his mother wanted to know.

"Just Teddy. He's, well, you know. He's home." He didn't feel like telling his mother about Severus and Tilda getting married. Not yet. His mum would probably feel that it was all for the best that she'd turned down his proposal. Now Severus and Tilda were happy and his father hadn't come back to find the mother of his son married to his old teacher.

"That's nice," she said absentmindedly as she carried mugs to the table.

Nate looked around and asked, "Where's Julian?" He would have to tell Julian eventually, he knew, unless Severus wanted to tell his son himself.

"I called Abby and asked her to take him to dinner and a film so that Percy—your father—and I could talk. And so we could talk to you. He was quite excited—they're going to McDonald's and then to see _Toy Story 4_ or _Shrek 3._ A sequel of some sort."

"Oh," Nate said, eyeing his father appraisingly and feeling that it was probably very wrong that he was envying his little brother for eating food they were seldom permitted and seeing a film when he had a _father_ now. He also knew that it was wrong to envy Julian getting exactly the family he wanted—Severus, his dad, Tilda his stepmother, plus Teddy for a stepbrother. "So," he said to Percy, trying to cheer up, "where've you been all my life?" Until he said it he didn't realise what he'd really felt was wrong:

If his dad was alive all this time, where had he _been_?

#/#/#

Penelope licked her dry lips, sitting between Ron and Percy, opposite Nate. She'd thought that Nate had rather hero-worshipped Percy ever since learning of his father's identity—which was understandable, since she had told him such glowing things about Percy-the-spy—but now he seemed suspicious and hurt. She wanted to reassure Percy that Nate would come around, but didn't think it good form to do so in front of their son, so she gazed across at Nate as though his uncle and father weren't there and said, "Listen, Nate. If he could have been with us he would have. This wasn't a _choice_. It was something that was _done_ to him."

"Well, out with it!" Ron erupted impatiently. "What happened? Where were you? How are you here now? Bloody hell," he breathed, pouring himself some tea and sipping it too quickly, burning his tongue and swearing softly. Penelope gave him a look that meant, _Watch your language_. Nate rolled his eyes.

"You should hear what the kids at school say, Mum. And the ones here in London were even worse. I'm with Uncle Ron—I want to know what happened!" he said impatiently.

She met Percy's eye. He looked rather shy and frightened, but after a small nod, he said, "Years ago I found myself in Gibraltar with no idea of who I was and how I'd got there. I just had a slip of paper in my pocket with the name _Weatherby_ on it. I seemed to remember, vaguely, being called that." Ron snorted but Percy looked both mystified and offended. "What's so funny?" he asked.

Ron struggled to keep a straight face and said, "Erm, nothing. Sorry. Carry on," in a choked voice, as though he was trying not to laugh again.

"At any rate, I didn't remember—anything." He lifted his mug with a shaking hand and took a tentative sip of the hot tea. "I didn't know where I'd come from, who I was. I felt like I'd just been born, except for being able to speak and read and write. I knew what to call _things_ —well, most things. I just didn't know what to call _myself_."

He swallowed more tea, as if to fortify himself. "I found an old woman hanging out her laundry and she took me to the authorities, who tried to help me find out if someone called Weatherby had gone missing in Britain. They thought that was where I had to be from. My accent. But there was nothing. I had no papers, so I didn't have any choice but to stay in Gibraltar. One of the policemen had a brother who was a lawyer. His clerk had just had a baby and decided to become a full-time mother, so he asked me to work for him. I'd told the police I had a vague memory of working as a clerk. The lawyer taught me how to use a computer and telephone and said that if it didn't work out he'd help me look for another job, but he decided that he was satisfied with me and I've worked for him ever since."

"So you just—you just woke up one day in Gibraltar, didn't know who you were, didn't remember anything, then went to work as a clerk and just—just started a new life? Didn't it occur to you that someone had probably put a memory charm on you?" Ron demanded.

Percy made a face. "I didn't remember being a wizard, Weasley, so how was I to know what a memory charm was?"

"Well, _Weatherby_ —" Ron started to respond testily.

"Uncle Ron, shut up!"

"Nate!" Penelope scolded him.

Ron muttered, "If you were my kid," before clamping his mouth shut and leaning back in his chair with his mug of tea.

"So why are you _here_?" Nate wanted to know. "How did you find out who you are?"

Percy took a deep breath through his nose. "I was riding my bicycle to the shops one day and nearly ran over a blonde woman who _knew_ me. Or used to. She was there on holiday with—" He paused. "Well, I don't like to pass judgment, but—"

Ron leaned forward, his elbows striking the table hard in his excitement. "Who was it?"

"Narcissa Malfoy."

" _Malfoy_? Isn't that the bloke who tried to hex you, Uncle Ron?" Nate interjected.

Ron grimaced. "Among other things." Ron called Draco Malfoy some choice names under his breath. Penelope fought the urge to say _language_.

"Oi!" Percy said suddenly, looking quite cross with Ron. They stared at him. He looked nervous, then pointed at Nate. "I know he hears worse than that at school, but still."

" _Anyway_ ," Penelope said, rolling her eyes and continuing the story for Percy. "She was glad to see him because years ago, her husband was accused of killing Percy. Charges couldn't be brought, of course, because of the lack of evidence, but now that Percy is back and clearly alive she's hoping that his name might at least be cleared posthumously."

Ron snorted. "Much good that will do! I didn't know Lucius Malfoy was supposed to have killed you, Perce. What's she playing at? I mean, her old man did plenty of things that _were_ proved, plus he was killed by You-Know-Who himself for screwing up. I was right there with Harry when it happened. And Neville. You remember Neville?"

Percy seemed to be gripping his mug very tightly. "Oh, yes. I remember Longbottom," he said quietly, not sounding happy about it.

"Right. There we were in the Department of Mysteries, in this room with doors all around. We'd seen it in fifth year. Lucius Malfoy tried to curse Harry, but Neville—"

"Uncle Ron! I want to hear what happened to my dad, not about this Malfoy bloke! I couldn't care less about him!" Nate said, frustrated.

Percy swallowed and his hand shook as he brought his tea to his lips. "Right. Well, at any rate, Mrs Malfoy was very nice to me. Asked how I was doing. She told me who I really was and about being a wizard. At first, of course, I thought she was barmy. But she and her, erm, 'friend,' did a demonstration and showed me that magic was real. Then they gave me one of their wands to use and taught me a few spells, and soon I was doing it myself, which helped convince me."

Ron was frowning again. "Who was her 'friend'?"

He hesitated. "Blaise Zabini," Percy said finally.

Ron's brows flew up in surprise and his frown was replaced by a lewd smirk. "All right, Mrs Malfoy! Let's not let the grass grow under our feet." Percy started to stand, gripping the table tightly. His face had gone very white.

Penelope also glared at Ron and gestured with her head at Nate. " _Ron_!" Ron eyed Nate, who seemed blasé about it all.

"I'm just saying," Ron said with a combination of innocence and worldliness. "A woman of a _certain_ age, with a man who was in the same year in school as her son…"

"It isn't like that!" Percy insisted, returning to his usual colour and settling in his chair again. "Or, well, it didn't _seem_ to be like that between them. Perhaps—perhaps—"

"Perhaps she just misses her son so much, up there in Azkaban, that she's looking for someone else to fill that role?" Ron suggested, still smirking, not sounding like he believed this for a minute. Percy lifted his chin and looked him in the eye.

"Perhaps," he said stoutly to his little brother, but the effect was blunted by the vagueness and repetition of the word.

Penelope cleared her throat and eyed Nate again. "I really don't think that this is an appropriate topic of conversation."

Nate rolled his eyes. "Come on, Mum. I know all about boy-toys. I'm not a baby."

Ron guffawed and quickly covered his mouth, but his eyes were still merry above the hand that was failing to completely prevent his laughter from escaping. "The last time I ask _you_ for a favour connected to Nate!" Penelope cried. "You're a bad influence!"

"Oh, right," Ron said sarcastically, finally calming down. " _You're_ the one who was raising him as a Muggle until he went to Hogwarts. Muggle school, films, and television, _that's_ where he heard about that, you mark me."

To Penelope's surprise, Percy nodded in agreement. "I've seen a lot of Muggle entertainment that's pretty—well, you know." He eyed Nate nervously, as though not quite certain what he could or couldn't say. "Anyway, she and Zabini brought me back and let me get acclimatised before I came to see—to see your mother," he said to Nate. "There are things I don't remember. I'm not even certain who memory-charmed me. Could have been anyone. It might not have been Mrs Malfoy's husband."

Ron looked eager again. "We can help you to remember! The whole family. And there's this girl we went to school with. Not a girl now, of course. She has a business in Diagon Alley. She's helped other people who've been memory-charmed."

Percy frowned. "Helped how?"

"Inducing trances. Not exactly hypnotism, but similar. I've tried talking Harry into going but he thinks it would be a violation of his _privacy_ or something."

"Harry?"

Ron swallowed. "Don't tell me you don't remember Harry? I can't believe that you—"

"No, I remember. I mean—I didn't know he'd been memory-charmed."

"Oh, well, yeah, you wouldn't." He looked sideways at Nate. "Long story. Later."

"Right. I'll, erm, come see you tomorrow at—at Mum and Dad's."

Ron frowned. "Well, I don't live there anymore. You've a _lot_ of catching up. Luna and I live with her dad—it's not far from The Burrow—with our kids—three boys and a girl. Luna and I have been married for—Luna Lovegood that is—for—oh, wait, I know this—" Ron bit his lip, his eyes closed. "Okay, our last anniversary was—"

" _As you can see, Luna is the brains of the outfit,_ " Penelope said in an aside to Percy, smirking; he caught her eye and smiled back at her, giving her hope. "It looks like Weasley men tend toward Ravenclaws. Or at least clever girls. Look at us. And Bill."

Percy's smile started to fade. "Erm, Bill? My—my _brother_ Bill?" he said uncertainly.

Ron hit his head. "Oh, God, don't tell me you don't remember _Bill_? Listen, you should really consider coming to Diagon Alley with me."

"Tall," Percy said suddenly, squinting and looking into the distance. "Right? Bill's tall. Erm, long hair. Pony tail. Worked for a—a bank—"

"Right!" Ron said, looking relieved. "And he was in the Order of the Phoenix, like you. That's why you—why you—"

"—don't remember most of my life now," Percy finished, sighing. Ron shook his head.

"I still can't believe this. We—all of us—and Mum and Dad—" He groaned. " _Mum_. When—when we had your memorial, she didn't speak for weeks." He swallowed and wiped a tear from his eye. "And the rest of us… Fred and George felt awful about the way they'd treated you when we were younger. You know what I mean."

Percy looked like he had a lump in his throat. "Yeah, of course. Well, I can imagine. I don't actually remember it very well." He smiled feebly. "Which makes the whole 'forgive and forget' thing rather easy, doesn't it?"

Ron laughed but it sounded forced. "I reckon. Perce, you've _got_ to come to Diagon Alley. Not to harp, but Mum'll tell you the same thing. I couldn't convince Harry—but then, he only lost about half an hour of his life, and you've lost _years_."

Penelope looked closely at Percy, who had a panicked light in his eye. "Leave him alone now, Ron," she said quietly. "Let's have some peace tonight, yeah? We'll come to The Burrow tomorrow. Once Abby brings Julian home the four of us will talk."

"I need to go to the loo," Percy said suddenly, pushing away from the table, looking very pale. As he hurried from the room Penelope watched him go, her heart both aching for him and full of hope.

 _I knew there was a reason I couldn't forget him. It wasn't that I was being bloody-minded. Deep down I knew that he would come back to me._

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	36. The Return of Percy Weasley

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Thirty-Six**

 **The Return of Percy Weasley**

#/#/#

Penelope hoped that Ron hadn't unnerved Percy by talking about too many unfamiliar things. When she'd first opened the door of the flat and found him standing there she'd been unable to speak at first, and the way that he spoke to her was strange and rather un-Percy-like, though she supposed that was from the memory charm.

After Julian had left the flat with Abby and before Ron had shown up with Nate they'd talked half an hour with no break, sitting very close to each other on the couch. Eventually they'd stopped talking and their faces seemed to be very close together. He'd stared at her, clearly very nervous, so she moved first, brushing her lips lightly against his. She wasn't prepared for his response, which was to gasp, opening his mouth and bringing his hands up to grasp her head as she also opened her mouth. He kissed her back frantically, without any of the finesse she was accustomed to Percy Weasley possessing. (He was a perfectionist about _everything._ ) She stopped worrying about something that had nagged her a little bit: whether he had been with other women while he was in Gibraltar. The fact that he was so awkward and seemed to have no idea how to do a simple thing like kiss her seemed to indicate that he was out of practice.

He wasn't completely clueless, however. He could tell from the way that she was responding—or not responding—that something was wrong. "Sorry," he said breathlessly. "It's been so long—and—and have you _seen_ yourself? My God—what did you ever see in—in _me_? Why didn't you go for someone who was actually good-looking?"

She laughed. "Well, you _were_ pretty smooth. We'll have to re-teach you that, yeah? It's all right—I don't mind…" She stood and started leading him toward the bedroom but he hesitated and asked for the bathroom. When he emerged, he looked like he was going to _explode_ , and afterward she felt a little like a civilian who'd got in the way of friendly fire. _He doesn't feel like himself yet,_ she assured herself, watching him lie on his back, contemplating the ceiling over the bed with a rather silly grin. He seemed about to suggest that they give it another go—so he'd have more practice—when she realised that Nate would be arriving, so they'd dressed and continued to talk while they waited for the moment when he would meet his son.

Ron was rising to leave when Percy returned to the kitchen, some colour in his cheeks once more. With a furtive look at Penelope, he said, "If you don't mind, I think I'd better see my mum and dad tonight." He looked nervously at her and at his son. "I got to meet Julian earlier, after all. He's so young. It might alarm him if I suddenly spend the night. In the morning you can all come to—to my parents' house and we'll have breakfast. Erm, if Mum is all right with guests for breakfast, of course."

Ron shrugged. "Don't see why she wouldn't be, considering the occasion."

"Of course," Penelope said. "How could I begrudge your parents finding out that you're back? I'm surprised you didn't go there already, though I _am_ glad you thought of me first." She reddened slightly and turned to Ron. "Will you contact the others, or shall I?"

"Let me," Ron said swiftly. "Harry's my best mate, after all, and I see Fred and George a lot. But could you go to the post office in Diagon Alley and send a long-distance owl to Charlie? I couldn't possibly use my poor little owl to go to the reservation in South America. He can barely make it between The Burrow and our house." Ron turned to Percy. "If you're not back in practice yet when it comes to Apparating we can take the Knight Bus to Mum and Dad's."

Nate looked cross. "Why can't I go, too?"

"Because you've just got home from school and I want to talk to you about—a lot of things," Penelope said obliquely, looking sideways at Percy. "We'll see your grandparents tomorrow." She sighed. "I take it that all of the Weasleys are likely to be descending upon the Mother Ship in the morning?"

"Probably," Ron said. "Hard to say about Bill and Fleur. I just remembered—they're visiting her mum and sister in France. Could you send an owl to them, too?" Ron added, smiling feebly.

She rolled her eyes. "Very well. Oh, bother, if you're going to get the Knight Bus we might as well come along and get off at Diagon Alley, to go to the post office."

"Can we stop at McDonald's on the way back?" Nate asked.

"All right," she said, laughing. "Julian is, so you want to as well? Fine." She hooked her arm through Percy's. "And we'll have breakfast together tomorrow. Call me on your mobile, Ron, to confirm. We don't want to make your poor little owl fly to London."

Ron agreed and Percy nodded, saying, "Right. Okay then."

She couldn't help thinking that Percy looked a bit lost as he sat beside his brother on the bus. She and Nate got off outside the Leaky Cauldron and waved to Ron and Percy as the bus pulled away again. Nate sighed as they turned to the door of the pub.

"My dad. He's _actually_ my dad," Nate said in wonder, looking at the empty street where the bus had been moments before.

"Yes. He actually is," Penelope said dreamily, amazed that the very thing she'd hoped for all these years had finally happened.

#/#/#

" _Say Crumple-Horned Snorkack!_ "

Percy blinked in the flash's blinding light as Luna took yet another photograph of him, before The Burrow's living room hearth, this time with Harry and Ginny. Harry was feeling disoriented from all of the photography. He didn't think he'd seen so many flashes since just after he'd come back through the Veil. _At least it's Luna handling the camera_ , he thought, _not that trollish old wizard Rita uses_. Ron was writing about Percy's return for _The Quibbler_. No one else knew about him yet. The gathering at The Burrow was a family-only affair.

Ginny grinned and hugged Percy. "I still can't believe _you're back!_ "

Percy held her tightly, smiling uncertainly at her. "So, you and Pot—erm, Harry, have been married for a while?"

"Since the summer I left school," Ginny mumbled, putting her arm around Harry and pulling away from her brother, her face very red.

"Percy, what have I told you about that?" Luna's dreamy voice said. She sounded disappointed.

Percy jumped, putting his hands in his pockets very quickly. Harry frowned, confused, but when he turned back to Luna he understood. She shook her head at her eldest son. The eight-year-old boy's strawberry-blond hair was falling in his eyes and his hands were behind his back. Luna patiently held out her hand, waiting. Young Percy finally took an Extendable Ear from behind his back. Luna sighed.

"If someone wants you to know something they will tell you," she said mildly.

The boy's jaw dropped. "But that's _Dad's_! How do you think he gets most of his stories?"

Luna simply put the pinkish piece of rubbery material in her pocket. "If you're here, who's taking care of Diana?" she asked, changing the subject.

"Cedric and Hal. Between the two of them they can manage. They're looking for gnomes in the garden. And Nana's out there with them. She's also watching Charlotte and the twins. She can handle Diana if Ced and Hal can't."

"Gnomes. That sounds like fun. Why don't you join them?" Her voice was as mild as ever, yet Harry—and young Percy—could tell that this was an order, not a suggestion.

The boy sighed deeply. "Yes, Mum," he droned, turning toward the garden, his shoulders slumping. Luna turned back to Harry, Ginny and Percy, noticing the surprised look on Percy's face. Her own revealed nothing.

"Did that confuse you? We named our eldest boy after you. Ron's idea."

Percy took his hands out of his pockets again. "Oh, right. He told me that on the bus."

He'd no sooner said this than the noise of the Knight Bus erupted again outside. Harry went to the door, Ginny hurrying after him. "Penelope and the boys are here," he announced, wondering why Ginny was standing so _very_ close to him. They went out to the front garden to greet the newcomers to the party, but it wasn't just Penelope, Nate and Julian who disembarked from the bus. They were quickly followed by Hermione and Neville, carrying their baby daughter, Frances. The baby's abundant, unruly brown hair framed a very round face, like Neville's and his mother's, and her large, observant brown eyes seemed to take in everything around her.

"Ooooh!" Molly cried, coming around the corner of the house, toting Charlotte and Diana on her hips. "Look who's here, girls! It's little Fran!"

Harry did _not_ miss Hermione's mouth tightening when Molly said this. If her smile were any stiffer she could pass for being Petrified again. Suddenly Molly thrust Charlotte at Harry and Diana at Ginny so she could hug the littlest Longbottom, cooing over her plump, tiny hands and the chubby brown legs and feet protruding from her gingham pinafore dress. When Harry heard Percy's voice at his elbow he noticed that Ginny jumped a little and edged away from him again.

"I thought this was family only," Percy said, looking suspiciously at the Longbottoms.

"Hermione and Neville might as well be family, _right_ , Ron?" Molly said pointedly, bouncing the baby on her hip. Harry remembered that after Ron and Hermione broke up, Molly had explained to Ron that she would still welcome Hermione in her house any time, as she considered her to be a family member as much as Harry was, or any of her children. Ron would just have to get used to the idea. She also heartily approved of Hermione and Neville, as she and Arthur had known the Longbottoms well, but Harry thought she was also a little disappointed. The relationship with Neville made it less likely that Hermione and Ron would give it another go. Harry wondered whether that was why she wanted Hermione to come round 'any time.'

"It's amazing that you're back!" Hermione said, hugging Percy quickly. He looked shocked that she did this and it was over before he could reciprocate, his arms stiff by his sides while she had her arms around him. Neville shook his hand, nodding. Percy pulled his hand away abruptly.

"Ron? Where are you?" Molly evidently hadn't realised the first time she'd addressed Ron that he hadn't been nearby. She looked at the house and saw him in the doorway. "What are you doing?" she called. "Say hello to Hermione and Neville and Franny!"

" _Frances_ ," Hermione said, barely moving her jaw.

"I'm organising my story notes. We'll chat later," Ron called from the doorway of the house, raising his hand to wave at Hermione and Neville.

"Did you say something, dear?" Molly asked Hermione, turning back to her as Hermione reached for her daughter. Hermione had to _tug_ the baby from Molly's grip.

"Her name is _Frances,_ " Hermione said, the stiff smile in place still.

Molly took Diana from Ginny and Charlotte from Harry again. "Yes, dear, I know," she said, distracted. "Named after your dear father," she added to Neville, looking on him fondly. "We're still setting up tables in the garden for breakfast." As she turned away with the babies Harry saw Hermione's feeble—and failed—attempt not to frown at the back of Molly's head. "Bill and Fleur and Marguerite should be here soon," Molly went on breezily, "and I expect the twins to be—"

At that moment Fred and George Apparated not one foot away from their mother, making her stop so suddenly she looked like she was going to have a heart attack. "Fred and George! How many times must I tell you—"

"Yeah, Mum, we're very, very sorry," Fred said hastily, reaching for Diana, throwing her up and catching her, grinning at her laughter. "There's my girl!" he said. "Be riding a Firebolt 3000 any day now."

"Born to be in the air," George agreed, catching Diana when Fred tossed her to him. She screamed with glee.

"Stop that! Give me that baby—" Molly started to say, but George had already tossed her back to Fred, who nonchalantly handed his niece to his mother. The twins walked around her, both still grinning, as they approached Hermione and Neville.

"And another one! How are you, little Fanny?" Fred asked as he chucked Frances under the chin. Harry thought the only reason the baby wasn't tossed in the air like Diana was that Fred recognised that Hermione had a death-grip on her. Harry also thought that Hermione would soon look like she'd had an overdose of Pepper-Up Potion.

"Her name is _Frances,_ " Hermione said, her jaw clenched.

This time Neville also looked nettled. "Do _not_ call her that _vile name,_ " he said tensely to Fred.

"But _Frances_ is such a bore," George said, rolling his eyes.

"You couldn't have called her _Francesca_ , at least?" Fred suggested.

Hermione's face fell. "Oh. Wow. Actually, that's a really good one. Where were you when we were picking names?"

"Oi!" Neville said, bristling and taking the baby from Hermione, holding her closely. "You said you _loved_ the name."

But the twins had moved on to Percy. "Perce! The prodigal returns!" Fred slapped Percy on the back so hard Harry thought his teeth were going to fly out of his mouth.

"Hmph!" Molly scoffed. "If anyone is prodigal…"

The twins ignored her, as usual. George approached Percy and Harry saw Percy _flinch_ , perhaps fearing another round of back-slapping. "So, I hear you've been skiving in sunny Gibraltar. Lots of pretty girls to gawp at, yeah?" George said, winking.

"Well, erm, I wouldn't call it _skiving_ ," Percy said uncertainly. He never did quite know how to take the twins, Harry remembered. Then Percy looked like he was forcing himself to smile. "Maybe I should have had some of your snackboxes, though."

"Ha!" Fred laughed, slapping Percy's back again. While Percy looked rather alarmed by the twins—and also like he was trying _not_ to look alarmed—Harry thought that he was making a noble effort, considering how much of his life he didn't remember.

By the time they were sitting at the tables in the garden, Bill and Fleur, who had taken a midnight Portkey from France, had arrived in a Gringotts car driven by a very old goblin chauffer, with their daughter. Marguerite was a tall, willowy girl who had turned nine years old about a month after Ruby and Rory. She had her mother's hair and her father's smirk. Harry enjoyed seeing all of the cousins together for once. They got along remarkably well. Ruby and Rory, amazingly, would do whatever Marguerite did, while young Percy and his brothers were surprisingly polite at table. Luna had only to raise an eyebrow or gently shake her head and one of them would say, "Sorry, Mum," and correct his behaviour.

Nate, oddly enough, _wasn't_ the happiest-looking boy in the world. Sitting between his mother and his resurrected father, he seemed a little left-out and lonely as question after question was fired at Percy. Ron used his right hand for his quill and ate with his left. At length Harry thought he had an inkling about what was unsettling Nate.

"Would you like to have Teddy here?" he asked Nate, who sat across from him. His nephew looked up hopefully, but it was his little brother who answered.

"Could you bring Tilda and my dad?" Julian asked. Harry looked at Julian. He'd failed to notice that Snape's son, merely along for the ride as Nate's little brother, hadn't spoken much, not even to Ruby and Rory, who were listening to Marguerite talk about France.

 _Poor kid_ , Harry thought. _Having Snape for a dad._ "Of course, I'll fetch all three of them. I can Apparate there, make certain that they _can_ come, and if there's no problem we'll all take the bus back."

As he started to stand, Ginny grasped his hand and squeezed it. When he looked at her she was mouthing the words, _Thank you,_ to him. He squeezed her hand back.

"Your food will get cold, Harry—" Molly began.

"I'll use a spell to warm it up again. In the meantime, can someone add a few feet to one of the tables and conjure up a few more chairs?" He Disapparated as Arthur and Bill were doing this and Molly was trying to convince Fred and George that they didn't need to do a thing.

Harry knocked on Tilda's door a minute later, knowing that Snape was likely to be there, but it still didn't prepare him for the sight of his colleague answering Tilda's door in his dressing gown, in the middle of actually _laughing_ at something either Tilda or Teddy had said. Harry froze and stared. Snape abruptly stopped laughing and looked highly affronted at seeing _Harry_ , of all people, in the open doorway.

"Erm," Harry said, swallowing. When he saw Tilda coming down the stairs in _her_ dressing gown, covered in a pattern of large pink roses, it didn't help matters. He very inappropriately remembered that when he first took refuge in her house, so many years before, he saw her remove her dressing gown after she'd showered…

 _Stop that_ , he ordered himself. _If you're not careful Snape will find out what you're thinking. Don't want that, do you? And anyway—you're not interested in Tilda anymore._ It was perfectly true. He wasn't. But at this moment it was very easy to remember that he _had_ been, once, and why.

"Potter!" Snape said, making it clear that Harry's presence was _not_ welcome.

"Harry?" Tilda said uncertainly, walking toward the door, instinctively pulling the collar of her dressing gown together with her hands. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, erm, something's happened."

Tilda paled. "Oh my God! What?"

"No, no!" he said hastily. "Something good, I mean. I'm going about this very badly. I've come to see whether you all can come to a celebration."

"A celebration?" Snape said sceptically, eyeing Harry suspiciously. "An urgent celebration at this hour?"

"Well, it's just that—it involves Nate. And Nate is Teddy's best friend. And he just—he seems rather lonely in the middle of all of this and a bit lost and unprepared. And I thought, if there's anyone who knows how it feels to suddenly meet your father—"

" _What?_ " Snape said, gripping Harry's arm painfully. Harry felt something like an electric shock jolt them both at the place where the hand held his arm. Snape released his grip immediately. He peered into Harry's face very closely.

" _Percy's back,_ " Harry said, watching Snape for a reaction. Harry had never seen him so stunned. Snape seldom betrayed surprise so the fact that he showed any reaction at all was amazing, Harry felt.

" _Percy Weasley?_ " he whispered. Harry nodded.

"In the flesh. He was at Penelope's when Ron took Nate home yesterday. Turns out he wasn't so much dead all these years as living in Gibraltar with a memory charm on him making him forget most of his life, including being a wizard. He's been working as a lawyer's clerk and couldn't leave Gibraltar with no papers."

It was strange to see Snape having difficulty speaking. "Penelope—she must be—"

"Yeah," Harry confirmed. "She is."

"Severus, wouldn't it be better to have this conversation in the kitchen?" Tilda said suddenly. She seemed to be watching him very intently as he spoke about Penelope. He looked at her as if he'd forgotten she was there.

"Of course, of course," he said vaguely.

"Well, see," Harry said quickly, "I'm inviting you to breakfast. At The Burrow. That's where Molly and Arthur Weasley live," he explained to Tilda. "Nate's grandparents. Penelope and Nate and Julian are already there and I offered to fetch Teddy so Nate could have his best mate there, and Julian asked if I could also bring you and Tilda."

Snape had returned to looking sceptical. "You don't just want your son there because—" He stopped abruptly, then said, "Never mind," very quickly.

"You mean—Nate's dad isn't _dead_?" Harry looked up. Teddy, in jeans and a Gryffindor T-shirt, was coming downstairs.

"Right," Harry said, jolted. _When did Teddy get so tall?_ It was like seeing his dad in Snape's Pensieve again.

Teddy was suddenly grinning and looking impatient. "What are we waiting for? Can we go, Mum? Nate must be—well, that explains why he sounded so odd when I called him."

"Teddy," she said quickly, "don't assume anything. But, well—I reckon while we're at it we could make a little announcement ourselves."

Teddy frowned. Harry couldn't tell why. "Yeah, I reckon," he agreed, sounding reluctant.

It didn't take long for Snape and Tilda to dress and soon the four of them were on the Knight Bus, which was nearly empty the day after the summer term ending at Hogwarts. In no time they had arrived at The Burrow, only a little worse for wear. Harry was glad that he had offered to bring Teddy. Nate immediately brightened up, as did Julian, though it seemed to Harry that Julian was even more pleased to see Tilda than his dad. After being greeted by Arthur and Molly, who, Harry thought, was less than welcoming toward Tilda than she could have been, Snape, Tilda and Teddy sat at the new places that had been added to the table at the end where Percy, Penelope, Julian and Nate were already sitting.

Penelope did the introductions. "Percy, this is Tilda Harrison. She's Teddy's mum. Teddy is Nate's best mate."

Percy stared at Teddy before looking back and forth between Teddy and Harry. Harry felt an instinctive defensiveness rise in him. "So, you and—" Percy was having difficulty forming the words, glancing back and forth between Tilda and Harry so quickly Harry thought his eyeballs would fall out of his head.

Tilda was a deep pink colour as she cleared her throat. She nodded at Snape, beside her. "Perhaps this isn't the best time," Snape said quietly.

"Nonsense," she said briskly. "There's no reason to keep it to ourselves."

A slight frown pulling at the edges of his mouth, Severus Snape attempted a smile and stood, raising his voice. "Congratulations, Arthur and Molly, at the return of your son."

"…whose stepson will soon have a new step _mother_!" Tilda finished, taking Snape's arm and looking fondly at Julian, who squealed and threw his arms around her waist.

Harry swallowed. _What_? _No. This can't be happening. They're getting married? Tilda and Snape?_ But when he saw Ginny peering at him uncertainly he forced his mouth to smile. Harry stood and raised his glass of pumpkin juice.

"To Tilda and—and Severus," he said loudly, the forced smile making his face hurt.

" _To Tilda and Severus_ ," the others echoed, raising their glasses.

When Harry sat, Percy had a strangely familiar smirk on his face, though Harry couldn't remember ever seeing _Percy_ smirk. Later, Harry was putting dishes in the kitchen sink while Percy followed with an empty pitcher. Harry couldn't help noticing that Percy was still smirking all over his face while Harry put a spell on the sink to make the dishes wash themselves.

"Is there something you'd like to say to me, Percy?" he asked quietly, trying not to sound too confrontational, in case Ginny heard.

Percy laughed for a moment. "It's just—you should have seen your face when the mother of your bas—erm, your son announced that she was marrying _Snape_!"

Harry took some cups and saucers from the table and added them to the sink with a clatter. "I'm fine. It's just—well, how did you react to finding out that Snape was acting like _your_ son's stepfather? He'll actually _be_ my son's stepfather."

Percy looked surprised. "What are you talking about?"

Harry shook his head and left the kitchen. Percy followed him up the stairs. "Did that memory charm take away part of your brain? You used to be halfway intelligent."

Percy bristled and repeated, " _What are you talking about_ , Potter?"

Harry turned when they'd reached the bathroom. "Somehow you seem to have missed the part about Penelope having a kid with Snape. He's Julian's dad. Didn't you notice even a _tiny_ resemblance? That's what Tilda meant when she said that _your_ stepson was going to have a new stepmother."

Percy opened his mouth soundlessly at first. When he could finally speak he whispered, "Is _that_ what she was on about? I'm not married, so I can't _have_ a stepson."

"Well, you and Penelope have a kid, she seems to have been waiting for you to come back all of these years—I'm pretty certain that that's why she turned down Snape's proposal—and I reckon many of us just assumed—I know that your mum—"

"I'm not marrying anyone!" he said suddenly, his face very pale. Some of his freckles even seemed to be fading. Harry peered at him.

"Are you okay, Percy?"

Percy checked his watch quickly. "Erm, no, can I use the loo first?"

Harry stepped aside. "Of course. What's—" But Percy pushed past him without even a brief _thank you_ , slamming the door quickly. Harry grimaced. "You're welcome!" he called through the door. He received no answer from Percy and after fifteen minutes of waiting he gave up and decided that he could go to the loo when he returned home.

Harry went outdoors again, finding that most of the party was breaking up and some people had left already. Bill, Fleur and Marguerite were gone, as were the twins. Hermione, Neville and Frances were talking to Tilda and Snape while Teddy, Nate and Ron's boys played Tag with Ruby, Rory and Julian. Luna stood nearby, taking photographs while Ron ran around the garden with Diana on his shoulders. Ginny was speaking with her parents and Penelope while Molly cuddled Charlotte.

Harry walked up to Luna as she snapped a picture of Ruby and Rory. "That looks like it'll be a good one. But surely you're not going to put these in _The Quibbler_?"

"No, these are for the family album. I'll send copies to you and Ginny," she said, the camera against her eye again as she got Teddy and Nate in her sights, joined by Julian. The boys suddenly saw that she was photographing them and immediately started pulling hideous faces. Luna didn't react but simply took the picture. Harry laughed at the boys' antics, but Luna's silent stoicism made him clear his throat and stop. He remembered that she didn't tend to laugh unless Ron was telling a joke.

"He's a bit rude sometimes," Luna said, the camera still hiding her face as she searched for another subject to photograph.

"Snape? What, don't you remember what it was like to have him for a teacher?"

She looked him in the eye. "I meant Percy. And you need to get over Snape marrying your son's mother."

"Who's being rude now?" Harry snarled, sinking his hands deep into his pockets.

"You're the one who brought up Severus Snape. Was he always like that?"

"Percy?"

"Yes."

Harry shrugged. "He was never exactly my favourite person. I reckon you need time to get to know the real Percy."

Luna said something but he couldn't hear it. The kids started squealing loudly, chasing each other in circles, and then Ginny called, "Harry! Get the twins! We should leave."

"Okay!" he agreed. "Excuse me, Luna. Erm, I have a feeling that I didn't hear the last thing you said."

"I said, 'Don't I have to meet him first?'" She looked at him placidly and Harry frowned.

"Yeah, I reckon. But in terms of personality, I don't think you'll find that Percy with all of his memories will be a lot different from this one."

She sighed. "That wasn't what I meant."

He had to turn away from her and extract Ruby and Rory from their game with the boys. They moaned and groaned and fussed so he resorted to tickling them, which made them even more hysterical, which exasperated Ginny. Once they were home again, Hades jumping around them excitedly and barking madly, Harry threw himself into his favourite armchair by the fire and thought about Luna's words.

#/#/#

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	37. I am the Walrus

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 **Replay**

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 **Chapter Thirty-Seven**

 **I am the Walrus**

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The summer between his second and third years felt like the longest one of Nate Clearwater's young life. He thought he knew what would happen if Severus Snape decided to tie his life to Tilda Harrison's. He'd imagined visiting Teddy at Latere Farm, taking trips to Severus's cottage on the Isle of Wight with both his brother and his best mate, swimming every day, practically living out-of-doors…

 _Well,_ he thought crossly, _I am practically living out-of-doors_. There was certainly nothing to do _indoors_ at The Burrow, so he had little choice.

What he hadn't counted on was his missing _father_ coming back, his _father_ wanting to take his mum out to dinners and other nonsense instead of getting on with marrying her properly, his _father_ living with Nate's grandparents instead of with his mum, and, worst of all, his mum and dad deciding that since his dad was around now he didn't need to go off with Severus and Julian anymore. He had his _own_ father and didn't need to borrow Julian's. He hadn't counted on not getting to see his own brother during most of the holiday, being told that there was 'no time' for him to visit his best mate, and that if he wanted to see his cousins they could come to his grandparents' house while he was visiting his father.

He also hadn't counted on his mother's reaction. He was thoroughly disgusted with the way she behaved around Percy, trying not to offend him, jumping when he said jump and broadly hinting that he might spend the night at their flat.

Percy never did.

After spending a fortnight with his mother and Julian, Nate had been shipped off—which was how he thought of it—to visit his father at The Burrow. The same afternoon, Julian had been picked up by _his_ dad with Tilda and Teddy. They were on their way to holiday on the Isle of Wight. Nate had been to Severus's cottage before and had always had a grand time. He had been looking forward to going with his best mate. Now they were going without him and he was stuck at The Burrow, where there wasn't a television or computer in sight and the frog pond was perpetually covered in green slime.

The worst thing was seeing his mother's face when she was bidding all of them goodbye. She normally looked a bit relieved to have some time on her own, but Nate could tell she was close to throwing all dignity to the wind and begging Percy to stay. The previous night Nate had caught her crying in the kitchen when she was clearing up after their tea. He'd hovered in the doorway, hoping she couldn't see him as she leaned on the sink and sobbed into her hands. He went back into the lounge and made a great racket, shouting to Julian that he was going into the kitchen so his mum would be able to pull herself together before he entered. When he'd asked her whether she was all right she'd insisted that she was, obviously not knowing how very red her nose was.

Nate sat up in his bed at the top of his grandparents' ramshackle house when the rooster crowed at dawn, immediately hitting his head on the sloping ceiling. "Ow," he mumbled, rubbing his aching brow. After a month at The Burrow, he was glad he was going back to London soon. He loved his grandparents, and he _had_ been able to see Ron and Luna's kids pretty often, and even Ruby, Rory and Charlotte a couple of times, but he was getting tired of telling young Percy, Cedric and Hal what it was like to be at Hogwarts, tired of watching out for the twins' pranks, tired of keeping the babies from getting underfoot while his grandmother worked in the kitchen, tired of de-gnoming the garden, tired of staring at the layer of green slime grow thicker and thicker on the pond. He missed his mum, his brother and Teddy, and he missed Severus, who had been more of a father to Nate in the years that he'd known him than Percy Weasley ever had just by providing half his genes.

Trying not to knock his head on the orange ceiling again—he didn't know what his uncle had been thinking to plaster the small space with so much Chudley Cannons paraphernalia—Nate pulled on jeans and a tee shirt before going downstairs for the morning ritual: checking every hour to see whether his father was rising. His father didn't have to use someone else's room, like Nate, because nothing had been done with his old one. The door bore an old plaque declaring it to be _Percy's Room_. When Nate reached it, he rapped loudly.

"Dad! You awake yet?" he shouted through the door. Nate didn't see how he could fail to be, with the racket the rooster made. But he never got any response earlier than ten or eleven o'clock, and sometimes he didn't get a response then and they just had to wait until he came downstairs. Lunch was often Percy's first meal of the day.

"Can't I _go_ somewhere or _do_ something today?" he asked his grandmother as she set eggs and bacon in front of him in the comfortably shabby kitchen.

Molly Weasley tutted with her tongue as she sat down to her own breakfast. His grandfather had already left for work. "What would you like to do?" she asked.

Nate squirmed in his chair for a moment. "I dunno. I've never seen a professional Quidditch match," he said hopefully.

Molly sighed. "Oh, what a pity you're not staying with us next week! The Quidditch World Cup is being held in Norway and your grandfather and some of your uncles are going. They're quite excited about it. Scotland versus Ukraine."

Nate gasped. "What? Oh, can't I go, too? I know I'm supposed to be back in London, but—"

She shook her head sadly. "I'm sorry, Love. They had to get the tickets ages ago and, well, it didn't occur to them to get one for you. The other grandchildren, well, their mums and dads bought their tickets," she added, sounding a little guilty. "They didn't even have a ticket for your father, but he managed to finagle one from an old contact at the Ministry. He said it was lucky you weren't coming as well, since he didn't think he could manage to scrounge up another one."

Nate scowled. "I reckon that's why I'm here now, so I can go back to London and he can see the World Cup without his kid getting in the way."

Molly's mouth was very thin. "That's not it at all dear," she said with a quaver in her voice that was not convincing. "Eat your eggs and toast. More tea?" she changed the subject. "Perhaps your mum can take you to a football match or a Muggle film."

"I do that all the time," he lied. He didn't do it all the time, but he _had_ done both. Nate stared at his eggs and bacon and wished, very guiltily, that his father was still a memory-charmed lawyer's clerk in Gilbraltar.

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"Have we got everything?" Julian asked, bouncing as he walked. Tilda held his hand as they strolled from shop to shop, buying their last dinner on the Isle of Wight. Severus had told Tilda he had a holiday cottage, but she had still expected that they would spend the summer at the Farm. She'd been pleasantly surprised when he'd suggested going to the cottage during the month she had Teddy, who had already visited Harry and Ginny at the start of the holiday, just after Percy's return, and would be with them again during the fortnight before the autumn term, when they were taking a trip to Norway for the final of the Quidditch World Cup. She'd been worried about Teddy missing the farm, but he'd been excited about the cottage as well. Nate had told him about it.

Teddy's excitement had waned when he learned that Nate wasn't coming, but he'd rebounded once they arrived and he found that the cottage was right on the water, so he could virtually roll out of bed each day and into the sea. This was exactly what he did, even before eating. He looked like a seal much of the time as a result, his dark hair clinging wetly to his head. It was the first time Tilda remembered his hair _not_ standing on end constantly, as it always had done.

At this moment Teddy's hair was dry enough—temporarily—that it was behaving in its usual fashion, making it easy for Tilda to spot his head bobbing ahead of them in the holiday crowd. Severus held Julian's other hand, a market basket on his arm, but occasionally they gave each other a conspiratorial look and lifted Julian from the ground by both hands, making him crow in delight. Tilda laughed at Julian's reaction every time, remembering how delightful Teddy had been at this age, and while Severus did not smile, _technically_ , she saw something in his dark eyes that showed that he was not completely immune to his son's high spirits.

Teddy, on the other hand… He was occasionally still moody about Nate not being with them. Julian missed his brother as well. She and Severus had explained to them that Nate had waited his entire life to know his dad. She'd been especially stern with Teddy, reminding him that he should know exactly how Nate felt.

"I'm sorry it ruined your holiday plans, but I should think you'd have some consideration for your best friend," she finally said. He stormed off to his bedroom and slammed the door as loudly as he could. When she turned to Severus for help, she received none. She found his attitude nearly as infuriating as Teddy's.

"He is a teenager now," he reminded her, as if he needed to. He seemed like he was going to add something to this but stopped himself.

When she'd arrived at Hogwarts, Teddy had been enthusiastic and wanted to spend a lot of his free time with her. As the summer term continued, however, he found it harder to make time for his mother, and not just because he was revising. Besides the weekend detentions that were the result of exorcising Professor Binns, the rest of the time he wanted to hang about with Nate and Donna. He wanted to go to Wednesday afternoon Quidditch practice, even though he was still a reserve player, since he couldn't go to practices on the weekend. When she pointed out that he was still a reserve he was very put-out and had avoided seeing her for a week. It seemed that he had wanted to spend more time with her _in theory_ , only if it didn't interfere with the time he spent on other things.

"Wait," she said suddenly; "where's Teddy? I saw him a moment ago, but now I don't."

Severus stood half a head taller than her and could see farther. He dropped Julian's hand and shaded his eyes against the sun, scanning the crowd for the Potter hair.

"Hmm," he said softly.

 _Severus doesn't see him_ , she knew, but he didn't want to tell her. _Damn teenaged pride! Too old to do a simple thing like walk with his mother._ Panic rising in her chest, she couldn't resist calling out, "Teddy! Teddy, where are you?"

It seemed that this weekend there were more tourists about than ever, and they all seemed to be converging on the shops at the same time. "He's fine, Tilda. Don't worry," Severus said smoothly. "Probably bent down to tie his trainers. We'll find him in a minute. Don't fret. He's not a baby."

Tilda looked down at Julian, whose hand was still in her firm grasp. _Yes, but at one time he_ was _my baby._ It seemed not so very long ago that he was Julian's age and they were going together to the shops in the village, Teddy's hand held confidingly in hers when they crossed the streets, his grip tightening when they both noticed the glares of the town gossips, watching the Scarlet Woman with her Bastard Child. _Ours must be the only village in Britain where time stopped marching on after the fifties._ She remembered running the gauntlet of eyes. From what she could tell even the wizarding world was more tolerant than the gossips in their village.

"I'm sure you're right," she replied to Severus, not at all sure. She swallowed, holding Julian's hand more tightly, scanning the sea of tourists and still not seeing him. Panic took hold of her again.

 _Where was her son_?

Tilda continued craning her neck to see over the crowd, but she heard Teddy before she saw him.

" _You take that back_ _!"_

She glanced quickly at Severus, who was grim. "I believe that we have found him," he said in that low, methodical way he had.

Tilda fought the urge to snort and say, _"_ _No kidding_ _."_ Instead she pushed through the crowd, which had grown into a thick wall before them. When she finally broke through it was as though Teddy was in an arena. The people around him had purposefully pulled back to give him room for combat. However, when she saw who his opponent was she stopped abruptly in confusion.

A sixtyish woman with steel-coloured hair in the shape of a helmet, a stout, tweed-encased body and no neck, plus quite a bushy moustache, stood glaring at Teddy with narrowed eyes. She clutched a small bulldog under one arm, its face a mass of wrinkles. It looked terminally aggressive and cross and seemed to have been surgically attached to her. Perhaps, Tilda thought, it was feeding its mood to her, so that _she_ was also terminally aggressive and cross. Or maybe she was feeding her mood to the dog. It was hard to tell.

"Take it back? Oh, you're just like _him_ aren't you?" the woman sneered as the dog growled in agreement. "So full of yourself, so _convinced_ that your father wasn't a wastrel and a criminal, like his father before him. Hmph! I've been coming here on holiday for years. Clearly I'll have to rethink my future plans if this is what the place has come to."

"My dad's _not_ a criminal!" Teddy cried, looking like he'd run a long race and was trying to breathe normally again. "And neither was _his_ dad! I don't know who you are, but—"

She gawped at him, as though he should _of course_ know who _she_ was. "Don't know who I _am_?" she breathed, incredulous. Her eyes narrowed even further and, suddenly sounding very crafty, she asked him, "How old are you? When is your birthday?"

"May Day!" he spat. She chortled, her large tweedy belly shaking like a strange woollen pudding. Tilda didn't know what the woman was thinking to wear wool in _August_.

"I'm not _doing_ anything to you, boy, don't be so dramatic. 'May Day.' You're not _at sea_ , you know. You needn't cry out to be _rescued_. It's your no-good father who—"

"No, you stupid old cow! _That's_ my birthday! May Day. I just turned thirteen, not that it's any of your business!" Teddy was quite red and seemed like he might actually _strike_ her. Tilda watched, fascinated, unable to say or do anything but also unable to look away.

" _May Day_ …" She drew it out, the narrowed eyes boring into him, as though his _birthday_ were some sort of indictment, final proof against him. Which, Tilda immediately realised, it _was_. It suddenly dawned on her why this woman looked so familiar. She'd never actually met her, but—

" _May Day_!" the woman said again, this time spitting it out in disgust. "Thirteen! I knew it! _I knew it_! Fourteen years ago, I'd just been released from hospital and was still recovering from a _brutal attack_ thanks to your criminal father, who _firebombed my brother's home._ And what was your father doing? Well, evidently, he was off shagging some tart, producing _you_ , his bastard!"

Tilda stepped up to Teddy, still holding Julian's hand. She put her other hand on Teddy's shoulder and glared at the woman she knew _had_ to be Marge Dursley. Harry's descriptions of her were spot-on, so much so that seeing her in the flesh was rather surreal. Tilda felt that she couldn't possibly be more horrified or amazed if one of the magical creatures the Hogwarts students learned about had suddenly materialised before her. She avoided the Thestrals on Harry's recommendation and had not ventured into the Forbidden Forest, where Ginny had told her a herd of Centaurs lived, but she had been sitting in on some of the Care of Magical Creatures lessons conducted by Professor Grubbly-Plank (Wilhelmina, who had become a friend), so she knew about even more species than Thestrals and Centaurs. Marge Dursley was every bit as monstrous and as horrible as the most bizarre beasts Wilhelmina had talked about. Aunt Marge was exactly the sort of creature you hoped never to meet, even in your worst nightmares. _Give me fire-breathing dragons any day,_ Tilda thought.

Before Tilda could open her mouth to speak, the shrill yet calculating voice of Marge Dursley continued, this time directed at Tilda, a steady stream of hatred and bile: "I should tell you, madam, that this boy you've adopted is the product of the absolute dregs of society! I've seen it with dogs and there's _no difference._ You can't be too careful when you're taking in a stray. Oh, sometimes someone will turn up on my doorstep with what seems like a perfectly good pup, but if they don't know where it's from, and _especially_ if they don't know the bitch, I always advise them to drown it. Of course, the idiots never do and then they find themselves stuck with a worthless _mongrel_ just because they took pity on a _puppy_.

"That's what the government does: they use soft-hearted idiots' sympathy toward _infants_ to foist _human_ mongrels on them and then everyone is _amazed_ when the brats grow up to be whores and drug dealers and burdens on the rest of us!" she proclaimed. "They're homeless and parentless for a _reason_. I tried to tell my brother that when _this_ one's father turned up, needing a home, but _no_ , he said his wife was determined to keep him. Her sister's son. Bad blood, bad blood, you know, probably no better for this one, very likely worse, if possible. Who else would deign to let that delinquent touch her, after all? She was probably a disease-ridden—"

" _Shut up!_ " Teddy screamed, his voice cracking. Marge Dursley looked at him in shock, as though she couldn't understand why _anyone_ shouldn't love the sound of her voice, much less what she was saying.

Tilda couldn't stop herself from tightening her grip on Teddy's shoulder. She _wanted_ to be tightening her hand around the vile woman's neck, but she'd have to _find_ it first. She tried to keep her voice as even as possible as she said, "I'll have you know that I am his mother, that he is _not_ adopted, and that there is nothing wrong with either my blood or Harry's, thank you very much," she ground out, her jaw hurting from being clenched so hard.

It was also very difficult not to remember all of the taunts from when she was young, the accusations of either being dotty, since she was the daughter of the biggest liar in eight counties and was said to believe everything her dad said, or untrustworthy, because of her dad's prison record. She actually didn't mind being thought a nutter as much as being watched constantly by people who seemed to think it was only a matter of time before her criminal tendencies rose to the surface, as though it was inevitable that she should go to prison, like her father.

Marge's narrowed eyes landed on Tilda with evident delight. She was _not_ going to let this go. " _You_? And young Potter?" She looked Tilda up and down, appraising her and clearly finding her wanting. "You're not exactly a spring chicken, are you? Going on fifty, I'd say."

"Forty-six," she practically growled, "not that it's any of your—"

"So! You were _twice his age_ when _this_ happened!" Marge quickly calculated, waving her arm at Teddy as though he were a biological experiment gone very wrong. "Just par for the course, isn't it? A junior gangster and a child molester," she suggested with a lewd drawl and a wink to a shocked-looking old man standing nearby. He started edging away from Tilda as though she might be thinking of branching out into molesting the elderly—and then edging back towards her as though he'd decided that he wouldn't mind that after all.

Tilda glared at the old man and then at Marge. "I am _not_ a child molester!" Tilda retorted, the pain from her jaw sending stabs of agony into her brain, which throbbed, it seemed, with every syllable she spoke. "I never—! Just shut up, you old—you fat old _walrus_!" Tilda sputtered in frustration and indignation. "Talk about not being a spring chicken!"

" _You_ _never_ _,"_ Marge chortled, ignoring Tilda's last remark. "Oh, _that's_ rich. You've just admitted to being a cradle-robber—"

Suddenly Julian stepped in front of her and Teddy, his face contorted in rage. "Oi, shut up, you! Tilda's right, you're just a big fat walrus! And you can't talk to her that way! She's going to be my stepmum and just 'cause her dad went to prison don't mean she'd steal anyone's baby!"

Tilda squeezed her eyes shut and slapped her brow, realising what all of this must sound like to a seven-year-old. She also wondered who had told him about her father's history. Possibly Teddy. That was just giving the woman more ammunition. "Julian, darling," she started to explain, crouching to talk to him, "she's not saying that I took anyone's baby. Of _course_ I wouldn't do that."

"So, _you_ come from a family of criminals as well. Why am I _not_ surprised?" Marge said to a middle-aged man with white cream on his nose, for sunburn, as though he was certain to agree with her. However, he was looking with leering interest at Tilda and did not seem to be on Marge's side, so she quickly turned away from him. "And some other respectable man is marrying _you_ and allowing you to take care of his child?" Marge sneered, moving her eyes to Severus, who had his hand on Teddy's other shoulder as though holding him back from Marge. "Hmph! I shouldn't have said 'respectable' so quickly, should I? You're no prize yourself, obviously," she said, before scrutinizing him with narrowed eyes. "Have we met? Aren't you that architect who was working on my brother's house? Quite honestly, you looked like a gangster then, and still do. But still, are you quite certain that you want a woman near your son who would—" She waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Tilda turned away from her, certain that her face was bright red. Marge Dursley was evidently incapable of _not_ insulting everyone she met, let alone feeling any compunction _not_ to air out the dirty laundry of perfect strangers. Tilda continued to crouch beside Julian, very careful now not to touch him, suddenly very self-conscious after Marge's insinuation. She whispered to Julian, "It's all right, just Teddy's dad's horrid old aunt. We'll go and—"

" _Bloody hell_ ," Severus whispered. Tilda looked up to see that Marge Dursley was growing—which was an appalling development in itself—but in addition to growing _larger_ she was also growing body parts she hadn't had before:

 _Flippers_.

 _That explains why she stopped talking,_ was the first thing Tilda thought. It might also have had something to do with the enormous tusks now growing down her front. Marge Dursley looked in speechless horror at what used to be her hands and feet. In addition to the magnificent flippers that had replaced her human appendages, her tweedy suit seemed to have been incorporated into her walrus skin, which had a distinctive herringbone pattern to it, with brassy buttons down the front and small flecks of red and green amongst the grey. Even more horrifying, she was gazing at her dog with a greedy _hunger_ in her eyes, as though she wasn't just _looking_ the part of a walrus.

Julian's dark gaze was trained steadily on Marge. Tilda realised that it was not Teddy who had performed the magic, which was her first thought, based on years of experience. She glanced at Teddy, who was laughing uncontrollably and slapping Julian on the shoulder, congratulating him. Tilda was vaguely aware of a quick motion out of the corner of her eye. Severus pocketed his wand, and when Tilda looked at Marge once more she was deflating, returning to her previous human form, no longer as large nor as flipper- and tusk-endowed as the walrus that had been standing before them. Her eyes were closed and the people around them also had their eyes closed, wobbling uncertainly on the balls of their feet. Tilda felt a sudden very inappropriate urge to laugh as she remembered the _Daily Prophet_ advert she'd read: _Side effects include dizziness, vomiting and tusks._ Perhaps Marge had accidentally used a magical product without reading the fine print. She stifled a snort at this thought and looked furtively at Severus, struggling with all her might to keep a straight face.

"Back away," Severus said to her quietly, evidently not noticing Tilda's effort to control her laughter. "Take the boys to the cottage. I'll be there soon."

Tilda nodded and stood, pulling the boys away with her. It was difficult because Teddy was weak from laughing, which made it even more difficult for _her_ not to laugh, and Julian was still stiff with fury. She looked over her shoulder. Severus moved his wand under cover of his jacket and suddenly the people who'd been surrounding Marge and Teddy looked about with disoriented, sleepy expressions, resuming what they had been doing. Severus brushed past Marge Dursley without a second look and Tilda turned around once more, hustling Teddy and Julian before her as quickly as she could, so Marge couldn't get a look at Teddy again. She knew that he was instantly recognisable as the offspring of Harry Potter in the wizarding world and was accustomed now to the staring and pointing when they did Teddy's school shopping, but she hadn't expected to meet someone on the Isle of Wight who knew Harry.

When they returned to the cottage Tilda scolded Teddy for encouraging Julian. "You know it's illegal for either of you to do magic."

"Well, they can't exactly expel Julian from Hogwarts, since he's not at school yet. I doubt his Muggle school cares about him doing magic. And she made a _brilliant_ walrus, didn't she?" he laughed. "Fantastic idea, Mum!"

Tilda was about to retort that it was _not_ her idea when she realised that she _had_ been the one to say _walrus_ first. Clamping her mouth shut, she carried the food they'd bought to the kitchen. After putting the bags on the scrubbed wooden table she filled a large pot with water, putting it on the cooker and adjusting the flame so it was a hot, brilliant blue. She'd been surprised that Severus had absolutely no magical gadgetry in the holiday cottage, but also relieved. Living at Hogwarts was so full of surprises that it was a relief to know how everything around her worked. When Julian was born Severus had bought the place so that he had somewhere to take his son that wouldn't betray his identity as a wizard, in accordance with Penelope's wishes. He rented out the cottage to other holiday-goers through a Muggle estate agent and all of the tenants were Muggles. It wouldn't do for them to find anything magical lying about or for the tenants to need to be magical to do a simple thing like boil water.

Teddy helped her put the food away without prompting but she only acknowledged this with a terse, "Thank you," before relenting and abruptly pulling him into a hug. He was rather stiff and awkward about it, patting her on the back before pulling away, turning red. _Breaking the cardinal rule of being thirteen,_ she thought. _Don't show any affection toward your mum._ "Thank you," she said again, quite earnestly, searching his face. "For standing up for me when she was—she was insulting me. And also—thanks for keeping yourself under control. Although I wouldn't have been surprised if you _had_ been the one to turn her into a walrus, you're not seven years old anymore." More than once, when he was younger, Teddy's accidental magic had been a direct result of someone in the village saying nasty things about her.

Teddy's redness subsided. "I know. I _was_ doing my best to stay in control. I've been at Hogwarts for two years, after all. I think it helps. Once you actually start _doing_ magic it's less likely to, erm, 'leak out' when you don't want it to."

Tilda snorted as she broke a fistful of spaghetti in two and put the pasta on a plate beside the cooker. If she was remembering correctly, Harry had inflated his aunt after he'd completed two years of school. Having seen Marge Dursley in action she wasn't the least bit surprised that Harry _and_ Julian had lost it and was even more surprised that Teddy _hadn't_. She was running water over a sieve she'd filled with tomatoes when a small voice said, "Tilda?" very timidly, except that it sounded more like _Tilder_. She turned off the tap and left the sieve sitting in the sink as she turned to Julian, who looked quite abashed.

"Yes, Julian?"

"You're not—you're not cross with me, are you?" he whispered. It was a good thing she was looking at him head on. He was speaking so quietly she was certain that if she hadn't been able to read his lips she wouldn't have understood him. His large dark eyes were apprehensive, as though worried that he'd committed an unforgivable sin. "I—I didn't mean to turn her into a walrus. Until you said that I was thinking that she was a bloody great cow, actually."

Tilda threw her head back and laughed before enfolding the little boy in her arms. Unlike her own son, he didn't pull away with embarrassment. Julian threw his thin arms around her waist and closed his eyes while she kissed the top of his head. "No, Julian," she murmured against his hair, "I'm not cross with you. Would you like to help me chop the mushrooms?" She smiled down at him and he smiled back.

"Okay. And I promise—no magic."

She nodded, trying not to laugh again. "I promise too. No magic."

He laughed at that and she gave him a plastic knife to slice the soft mushrooms while she chopped the tomatoes and onions with a proper knife and wondered what was taking Severus so long. When he finally returned she had to bite her tongue to keep from asking him where he'd been, but she didn't expect a straight answer so it seemed pointless to ask. To her relief, he didn't give Julian a long lecture, just a simple admonition to keep control of his emotions, to which Julian responded with a soft, "Yes, Dad."

Tilda couldn't help thinking, _Yes, you're the master of keeping control of your emotions, aren't you? Sometimes…_

He gave her a quick peck on the cheek before tucking into his food and used his wand to expedite the clearing up afterward, delighting Julian with this show, though Teddy looked rather bored about it and asked repeatedly whether he _had_ to wait a half-hour after eating before going swimming again. Tilda sighed with exasperation.

"I feel like a broken record saying this, but _yes_ , you have to wait."

Teddy frowned. "A broken _what_?"

She raised one eyebrow. "You know, a record. Those things I sometimes play on your grandfather's old Victrola."

He broke out into a grin. "I knew what you meant."

She pretended to swat him. "Go change for your swimming. Time's almost up. It moves so quickly, you see, and makes you into an elderly, decrepit person before you know it. Like me."

He laughed as he sprinted upstairs. "I was just playing with you, Mum. And you've got, oh, at least five years yet before you're elderly, surely." He grinned at her before running off to his room, singing softly, " _Coo coo ca choo, coo coo coo ca choo… Sitting in an English garden…_ " Since that was on one of the records she used to play most often she knew that he did indeed remember the days when she would play her old Beatles albums and dance around the house with him in her arms. It seemed so long since he'd been small enough for her to do that.

" _If the sun don't come you get your tan from standing in the English rain…_ " she sang softly to herself as she returned to the kitchen.

When the time limit had finally passed both boys were ready to jump into the water again and the late, slanting summer sun gilded their personal pier, just outside the kitchen door. Tilda sat on the edge of the pier and watched the boys jump into the water, frolicking like puppies. She smiled, enjoying _their_ enjoyment, but something at the back of her mind nagged her. Severus wanted to read _The Evening Prophet_ , so he'd stayed indoors, letting the three of them soak up the last rays of the sun. She couldn't stop herself from singing, " _See how they spy, like pigs in the sky,_ " when she thought of Severus, the former spy, which was _real_ , unlike Harry's tales of being a spy-in-training before she found out that he was a wizard. She sighed, trying to work out just what was bothering her, but couldn't. She inevitably ended up going over and over the encounter with Marge Dursley in her head. " _I am the egg man… we are the egg men…_ " She was glad that she'd bitten her tongue and hadn't said something that would _really_ have caused Severus to brood, but she was convinced that she'd said something that was making him brood just the same.

 _Experts, sexperts, choking smokers, don't you think the joker laughs at you?_

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 **Note:** The snippets of song lyrics and the title of the chapter are, of course, from _I am the Walrus_ , by John Lennon (sometimes also credited to Paul McCartney). There are some extremely conflicting versions of the song lyrics on the web. Inasmuch as the words are mostly nonsense anyway (and probably written while Lennon was on an acid trip) I chose a version that worked well for my purposes, so your mileage may vary.


	38. Living the Secret

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 **Chapter Thirty-Eight**

 **Living the Secret**

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Nate had hoped to meet up with Teddy in Diagon Alley to do their school shopping, but after Teddy left the Isle of Wight he went to stay with Harry, Ginny and their kids again and he already went shopping with them. Instead Nate was shopping with his mum, dad and Julian, who had been uncharacteristically subdued about his holiday, saying to Nate, "You know how boring it is there." He knew very well that Nate loved going to the cottage. Nate was having the worst summer of his life and as far as he could see it was all because of his _dad_.

It wouldn't be quite so bad, he thought, if his mum and dad had really got back together, if the three of them plus Julian were a happy family now. Instead he knew that during the trip to Diagon Alley, his mum and dad would dance around the fact that they weren't even living together, and that his mum would be miserable the entire time. The summer was nearly over and Nate couldn't wait for school to start for two reasons: he'd be able to see Teddy again and he wouldn't be able to see what his dad was doing to his poor mum.

They met Percy outside Gringotts after exchanging some Muggle money for wizarding silver and gold. He seemed oddly cheerful. "There you are! Let's get started. What's first? Do you need new robes?" he asked Nate. Nate nodded.

"He had a growth spurt just in the last fortnight, I think," his mum said, a stiff smile on her face.

"I need new books, too," Nate said. "The third-year books for Transfiguration, Charms and Defence, plus the ones for my new subjects."

"Right, third year. Erm, what did you choose?" Percy asked.

"Ancient Runes and Arithmancy. Uncle Harry—I'm allowed to call him that when we're not at school," he added quickly, because his father was making a disapproving face. "Anyway, he said Divination is frustrating, because when you don't predict something correctly the prediction is useless, but when you do it can be depressing, so Teddy and I decided to avoid that. I didn't want to take Muggle Studies, since I already know what it's like to live as a Muggle and Teddy isn't taking it for the same reason, plus his mum's the teacher."

Percy looked jolted. "A _Muggle_ is teaching at Hogwarts?" he hissed. Nate was surprised. He could have sworn he'd said that Teddy's mother was teaching at Hogwarts. And Nate's mother was Muggle-born. Nate looked sideways at her to see her reaction, but she was trying to drag Julian past a fascinating display in the window of The Magical Menagerie: salamanders crawling over a pile of glowing coals sitting in a large, shallow cast-iron bowl.

"Didn't I mention that?" he said. "Thought I did. Anyway, Teddy doesn't have any choice about his dad and stepmother teaching Defence, and his future stepfather teaching Potions, but he didn't want to throw in his mum as well, since he _does_ have a choice about that. I _could_ have taken Care of Magical Creatures, but I don't mix well with animals, as a general rule. Teddy decided to take that instead of Arithmancy, so we won't have all of our lessons together in September," he added, feeling a little sorry for himself.

"Don't get me started on what a dangerous subject Care of Magical Creatures is," his dad practically snarled, shaking his head as they walked.

"Erm, okay," Nate said in confusion, since his mother had told him that his dad had not taken this subject but thought it excellent preparation for his Uncle Charlie to take up the study of dragons. His mum had told Nate that she suspected he got his uneasiness with magical animals from his father, that it was genetic rather than learned. _That's probably why Dad thinks it's dangerous and why he decided not to take it_. He couldn't picture Percy taking up dragon-keeping, like his Uncle Charlie, whom he'd met twice, briefly. Charlie seemed as different from Percy as night from day.

"You probably should have gone for Divination and Muggle Studies," Percy said as they passed Ollivanders. Julian started hopping excitedly.

"Ooh, Mum! The wand shop! Can't I get a wand? I promise not to do any magic until—"

"Are you mad?" Penelope said to Julian, snorting. "You want me to get you a wand _four years_ before you're old enough for Hogwarts?"

"But Mum, can't I at least _see_ the wands?" Julian pleaded. Penelope rolled her eyes.

" _Fine_. You can _see_ the wands. But you may _not_ try any of them." She turned to Percy. "Can you get Nate his robes and books? We'll also go to the stationer's and the apothecary and then meet you outside the bookshop afterward."

"No problem," Percy said jauntily, taking Nate's hand. Nate pulled it away again.

"Erm, I know you've been away and didn't have the chance to be my dad when I was little, but I'm kind of _old_ for you to hold my hand," he tried to explain discreetly. Percy nodded.

"Right. Sorry. I've got used to holding your brother's hand when we cross streets."

 _Yes, but he's seven years old._ Nate had to try very hard not to roll his eyes.

He stood patiently while Madam Malkin pinned up the hems of his new robes. His dad disappeared for a while but returned when she had finished. As they walked to the bookshop, Percy suddenly said, "Does he ever get on your nerves?"

Nate was jolted. "Who, Julian? He's okay. I miss him when I'm at school, actually." He looked at his father out of the corner of his eye. Was Julian the reason he hadn't been very eager to get back together with his mum? He longed to ask him this, but instead said, "Why did you say I should have signed up for Divination and Muggle Studies?"

As they entered the bookshop the musty odour of old books assaulted their nostrils. Nate breathed it in, loving it, trying not to be disturbed by the idea that Percy might not want to be Julian's stepfather. _Tilda doesn't mind the idea of being his stepmother,_ he thought, remembering a few less-than-generous things he'd heard Fred and George say about his dad when they didn't know Nate was nearby. _Percy the ambitious, Percy the Head Boy, Percy the swot._ He'd been torn between defending his father and defending himself, since he knew what it was to be called a swot and wondered whether his uncles thought he was beneath their notice because he was a great deal like his father. With a sigh he tried to put these thoughts out of his mind and just enjoy being in Flourish and Blotts. The bookshop was his favourite place in Diagon Alley and the next best thing to being back in the Hogwarts library.

"You're just going to make it hard on yourself with subjects like Ancient Runes and Arithmancy," Percy said suddenly, making Nate jump. He'd forgotten that he'd asked his dad a question. "I know blokes who did that and they ended up as swots. You don't want to be a swot, do you?" Nate swallowed, unwilling to admit that he'd had this reputation since his first year, not to mention in his Muggle school when he was younger. However, his dad had had this reputation in school as well, so Nate didn't know whether to be insulted—like when he'd overheard Fred and George—or sympathetic, since his father obviously didn't remember large parts of his life still.

"You already know all about Muggles. You could have done that in your sleep," Percy went on, "not to mention your best mate's mum is teaching it—and your little brother's future stepmother—so she's not going to give you low marks. And you can skive off most of the work in Divination by making up predictions."

Still thinking that Percy's attitude toward 'swots' was very strange, he said, "Yeah, Uncle Harry and Uncle Ron said that's what they used to do. They still thought it was tedious, though, and not very useful. I mean, unless you're _born_ with the Sight, or if you're a Centaur…"

"Potter and Wea—I mean, Harry and Ron _made up_ their Divination homework?" he said, looking and sounding outraged.

 _Huh_. _That's more like the way a former Head Boy with twelve OWLs would react._

"Well—yeah. That's what you were just telling me _I_ could do." Nate peered at his father, who was very pale. Even his hair was pale. "Are you all right?"

"Fine. Need to go to the loo," he said quickly, his eyes darting around. He dashed to the back of the shop without another word. Nate frowned.

 _My dad gets the trots a lot,_ he thought idly, before his eye was caught by a table of new books about the war that had ended with his uncle's defeat of Voldemort.

 **Harry Potter and the End of the Dark Lord:  
A Complete Disregard for Wizarding Law? **

**An Exposé by Michael Corner**

Nate rolled his eyes and did his best to ignore the author, who was sitting beside a table stacked high with a pyramid of his books, signing each with a flourish. This was nothing new. Many books had been published about Harry Potter being the Chosen One, the saviour of the wizarding world, but there were just as many lambasting him for being nothing more than a vigilante, summarily executing Voldemort rather than capturing him so he could be tried by the Wizengamot. The debate raged on, though the war had ended over a dozen years earlier and Harry and Ginny were firmly ensconced as the Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers at Hogwarts. Nate didn't recognise the author, a handsome man about the same age as Harry, with dark wavy hair and a ready smile for each person waiting for an autograph. His deep blue robes sparkled with iridescent stars where the light hit them and matched his tall hat. Nate heard him speaking to someone for whom he was signing a book.

"I always did think he was a bit full of himself at school. And he wasn't above stealing someone else's girlfriend, was he?" he said to a pale woman with a nose so upturned it was possible to look right into her piggish nostrils. "So, is it still 'Parkinson' or are you married now?" he asked suggestively, while she simpered and giggled and told him that she wasn't married.

Nate shook his head and tried to slip past, accidentally knocking over a stack of books with the man's preening, smiling face on the front, surrounded by the twinkling title. Questions about Harry kept appearing on the cover and then disappearing again. Nate watched _First-Year Quidditch Player—Or Should He Have Been Expelled?_ come and go, and then _Admits He Opened the Chamber of Secrets_ blinked on and off in sparkling green letters.

Nate snorted. He knew all about that one from his extensive reading. _He admits to killing the bloody great snake that was living in the Chamber, too, and to having saved my aunt's life._ He knew that Harry was always going to be a somewhat controversial figure, no matter what. The news about Teddy's existence hadn't reduced the controversy surrounding Harry. Quite the opposite.

Nate didn't bother fixing the spilled stack of books, though this would normally have been his impulse, out of politeness. He didn't want to touch the things at all, let alone help this Corner bloke, who seemed to hate Harry but had no qualms about making a living writing about him. Suddenly, a wizard stopped him as he was about to take a book down from a shelf. He had a camera slung around his neck and Nate glanced around quickly, looking for somewhere to hide. "Did I see you talking to Percy Weasley?"

"Erm," he started to say, when suddenly an all-too-familiar figure emerged from behind the photographer.

"Bozo, did I hear you say _Percy Weasley_? I can't get near him, every time I try, that damned brother of his—"

"You mean my Uncle Ron, who's the only one who's managed to print any interviews with my dad since he's come back?" Nate gave the witch a cold glare. She froze at the sight of him, her stiff blonde curls immobile as light flashed off her bejewelled spectacles. " _You're_ Rita Skeeter, aren't you?" he asked flatly. Teddy had told him about Rita showing up in Harry and Ginny's Hogwarts flat, describing her vividly, including drawing a very unflattering cartoon of her, and Nate had been bracing himself for a Rita-appearance ever since his father had returned. According to his grandmother, they'd had to get what Nate thought of as the wizarding equivalent of a restraining order. She wasn't permitted to use the Floo network to call The Burrow _and_ she was supposed to stay at least half a mile away from the Weasley home. Nate looked nervously at the back of the shop, where his dad had gone seeking the loo.

Rita slowly smiled. "Why, _you_ must be his son. Poor lad! So," she went on, removing parchment and an acid-green quill from her red crocodile-skin handbag, "what did you think when you finally met your father? Did you tell him that you'd been crying yourself to sleep every night of your life, wishing your dad hadn't been killed in the war? Was it like a dream come true for him to take you in his arms and tell you that he loved you?"

Nate stared at her, incredulous. Despite his utter silence her quill was skittering quickly over the parchment and he had a bad feeling that he wouldn't like what it was writing. "Mostly I was afraid that someone like you would try to get in my face and make up stories about me and my family," he said between clenched teeth, snatching the quill out of the air and breaking it in two before grabbing for the parchment as well. Rita was too fast for him. In a trice, she had grasped the other end and they were both tugging on it. It ripped, leaving Nate holding the larger part, though Rita did have some of what the quill had written. They both fell backwards when the parchment ripped and several books fell on Rita from the shelves above her head. Nate knocked over more of Michael Corner's books.

"What's going on here?" Percy suddenly reappeared, looking in confusion between Nate and Rita, whose stiff blonde curls had fallen into her eyes. She was still on the floor, looking disorientated. Blinking a bit, Rita adjusted what was clearly a wig, stood shakily—neither Percy nor Bozo offered to help her up—and pulled another quill out of her handbag.

"There you are!" she cried in an oily sort of voice. "I've simply been _dying_ to speak to you. And if your son had made more heavy books fall on me that might have been quite literal," she added, glaring at Nate and rubbing her brow.

Percy grimaced and grasped Nate's shoulder. "Tell me where to send condolences. I should probably do something for your relatives, since your death will be all my fault," he sneered. "However—are you supposed to be this close to me?" he asked, his eyebrows raised. Rita Skeeter blanched and retreated as Percy turned abruptly, guiding Nate right into the pig-nosed woman who'd been speaking to Michael Corner. He stopped immediately, looking shocked, then pleased.

"P-Pansy?" His dad looked as though he couldn't believe his eyes. The woman frowned. So did Nate.

"Perhaps Bozo could get a picture of you and Mr Corner together!" Rita Skeeter screeched, no longer attempting to get close to Percy but instead hopping frantically, trying to see over the crowd of people around Michael Corner's book-signing table, which seemed impassable to the feeble old Bozo. Corner did _not_ look pleased at the idea of sharing the limelight. Percy ignored Rita and her photographer but the pig-nosed witch was another story. She ducked her head and stood very close to Nate's dad, speaking crossly.

"Why are you talking to me like we _know_ each other?" she said in a low voice, looking around, as though afraid that someone would get the 'wrong idea'. Straightening up, she raised her voice: "I, for one, do not worship at the altar of the Weasleys, nor of Harry Potter." She grasped her autographed copy of Corner's book and tried to turn away but Percy followed her a few steps and whispered something in her ear that made her stare. In the end Nate saw her give Percy a very small nod. Nate felt like kicking something. If his dad was going to be picking up strange witches while they were shopping that was hardly likely to lead to his parents getting back together. _What's he want with her, anyway?_ He was furious on Harry's behalf, as she'd been having Corner autograph one of his books for her, and he was glad that his mum wasn't with them after all.

While they paid for his books, Nate said, "You don't want anything to do with her, trust me. She was buying one of those books about Harry, about how he's some sort of vigilante. I'm not just saying that because of Mum. Obviously your private life isn't any of my business. I'm just warning you about her, so you're not surprised," he added tonelessly, not looking at his dad.

As they turned to leave the shop, Percy said awkwardly, "Sorry, son. I—I appreciate the warning. You're right. I wouldn't want anything to do with her." Nate looked up at his dad uncertainly, but Percy gave him an apologetic smile so Nate tried to smile weakly back at him.

When the bookshop door had closed behind them they didn't see Penelope and Julian. Percy said, "Looks like they're still busy. We probably have a few minutes—fancy an ice cream? We'll see your mum and brother when they pass by on their way back to the bookshop."

Nate nodded and followed his father to Florean Fortescue's. They took an empty table near the door to the shop and soon each had a large chocolate ice cream cone. Nate looked warily at his father as he ate. He was very neat about eating his ice cream, even using a spoon, despite its being in a cone. Since his father was being a bit dainty about the way he was eating Nate felt brave about bringing up what might be a touchy subject. "It's funny—I thought you were supposed to be a bit of a swot in school. That's what Mum said. Not in a bad way, I mean. But, you know, twelve OWLs and all that. I've got a little bit of a reputation as a swot, too. Mum just reckons it's a combination of having you for my dad and a Ravenclaw for my mum."

"Erm, right, a swot," his dad said awkwardly, staring at Nate as though at a complete loss for what to say. "Well, yeah, I was like that in school. But sometimes I think I missed a lot, you know? It's good that you're getting high marks, but don't forget how to enjoy yourself, yeah?" Nate found this more amusing than he should have, given that his dad resumed eating his ice cream cone with the spoon immediately after. _Let the good times roll, Dad._

"I'll try not to," he said, suppressing a smirk. "Of course, we thought some of our worries would be over last term, 'cause loads of kids were really glad we helped get rid of Binns, but now it turns out Borodin is such a nightmare as the History master that everyone wishes Binns were back. At the end of the term Teddy and I had to sneak around the castle in secret passages to get from one lesson to another without being hexed." Nate let his voice sink into despair again before resuming eating his ice cream. Percy didn't respond but looked thoughtful, two vertical frown-lines between his brows as he ate, as though contemplating a solution to Nate's problem. Nate started to feel a little more optimistic, though he wasn't certain whether it was the ice cream or the feeling that he did finally have a father to talk to, someone who might try to come up with a solution to some of Nate's school problems—whether or not they worked. Even if his mum and dad didn't get back together, it couldn't be all bad to have another parent, could it? _The more people looking out for you, the better_. Percy took some getting used to, but since he'd been a swot in school maybe he had some tips for coping.

His dad looked like he was about to open his mouth and say something when Nate's mother and Julian, about to pass them on the way to the bookshop, happened to turn and see them outside Fortescue's. Penelope waved to them, smiling, and soon she and Julian were sitting with them. Nate let Julian finish his ice cream, as he was full.

"Sorry we took so long," she apologised. "There were queues _everywhere_. Shall we have tea at The Leaky Cauldron before going back to the flat?" she suggested, giving Percy a sideways look after this subtle invitation. "If you're not both full of ice cream, that is," she added, gently chiding Percy for allowing Nate to have this treat before his tea. Percy immediately bristled.

"We were hot and tired and wanted ice cream," he shot back. "And did you know that he and Pot—erm, Teddy got rid of Binns and now all of the other kids are out to get them?"

Penelope frowned at Nate. "I knew about Binns because I was called to the school afterward. But not the other. Did you say anything to Professor McGonagall about this, Nate?"

"Erm, no, since we were worried that she'd just say we deserved it."

"That's ridiculous! You were already doing detention for that."

"Well, they're right, aren't they? The other kids. Had a perfectly good, boring ghost for a teacher. Now they can't fall asleep or talk or anything fun. I used to catch up on my sleep in Binns's lessons," Percy added, taking a spoonful of ice cream from deep inside his cone.

Penelope gawped at him. "You must be joking! He was a horrible teacher. You used to criticise him yourself! And when did you ever catch up on your sleep in History of Magic?" she demanded.

Percy blanched. "Er, I mean, I can't stay to tea. Promised Mum I'd be home tonight—she's been cooking all day. See you," he said suddenly, rising from his chair and striding down Diagon Alley without looking back. They stared after him, incredulous, but the crowd had soon swallowed him up. Nate watched where he'd been, shaking his head.

 _I have the world's weirdest dad_.

#/#/#

The night before the new term, Tilda lay in bed beside Severus, staring at the ceiling. He suddenly asked, "Why did you say, _I never_?"

Tilda had thought he might be asleep but wasn't surprised that he'd spoken. She didn't turn her head to look at him. "What?"

"When the Dursley woman was accusing you. You said, _I never_."

She continued to stare at the ceiling. He had finally brought it up. She felt her heart beat faster. She wasn't at all surprised, though he was behaving as though he was commenting on something that had happened minutes earlier. She'd been expecting it since the day they'd encountered Marge Dursley. "It's true," she said, trying to keep her voice even. "I'm not what she said."

"I know. But—"

"In a way I _am_ a child molester? Is that what you're implying?" she demanded, sitting up and glaring at him.

"No, no." Severus frowned. "If the Dark Lord possessed Pot—erm, Harry—"

"What do you mean _if_?" she spat.

Oddly enough, he seemed more sad than cross. "Have you really convinced yourself that that is what happened? Have you rewritten history even in your own mind?" He surveyed her far too dispassionately for someone who planned to marry her, she thought.

"Have you—have you looked into my _memories_?"

"I have not used Legilimency to see memories of your son's conception, nor do I want to see—that. But I also do not believe that you shared sexual intercourse with an innocent boy, even one who was possessed."

"You're damn right I didn't shag a sixteen-year-old!" she confirmed angrily, wishing he'd either attack her or shut up. However, when he raised his brow and gave her a very penetrating look she gasped quietly, realising what he'd made her say. "Damn you!" she immediately spat, starting to cry. " _Damn you_ ," she repeated in a whisper, raising her knees and wrapping her arms around them, hiding her face from him.

The bed moved as he rose. When she looked up he was standing at the window, gazing at the moonlit paddock. His dark hair hung loosely on his shoulders. For some reason, when his hair wasn't pulled into a ponytail he always looked to her like the epitome of an evil wizard, scheming to take over the world, which she knew was nonsense. Tilda wasn't certain why she thought this, but she always hesitated to speak too freely when his hair was down. She was worried that he could _tell_ that she was a little afraid of him, though he had only used rather inconsequential magic around her. That she harboured even a slight fear of the man she planned to marry made her feel annoyed with herself. He'd never given her a concrete reason to feel this way, it was just the things Harry had told her about him, especially his having been a follower of the wizard who had killed Harry's parents, whom Harry had finally defeated. But he'd been on _Harry's side_ in that fight. Harry _had_ finally admitted as much, even as he still resented his former teacher for the indignities visited upon him during his school days.

 _It's stupid_ , Tilda told herself, as her heart thumped very quickly in her chest. _He'd never do a thing to hurt me or Teddy. And he was so patient with Julian, even after the accidental magic._ Hair up or down was no reason to suddenly fear Severus, she tried to tell herself. She came up behind him slowly, deciding that she should speak first so that she wouldn't surprise him. "Severus?" she said tentatively when she was a few feet away.

He didn't turn around. "Yes?"

"Severus, I—I want to—to tell you everything. But I can't."

"Can't? Or won't?"

She bit her lip. "Well, it's both, isn't it? I—I promised—"

Severus nodded. "That is logical. But you only promised? He didn't bind you magically?"

"Bind me—? Erm, no. I gave my word, though. And I don't intend to break it."

"You haven't." She stood beside him, watching his profile. He was expressionless, but she knew this was from years of cultivating an ability to hide his feelings. It had once been a matter of self-preservation for him to do so.

"Well, I reckon… I'm not sure that you _do_ understand, and I absolutely cannot tell you what really happened." He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Do you—do you still want to marry me?" She felt like she was proposing again. Severus turned suddenly and kissed her. She was caught by surprise but quickly recovered, sliding her arms around his neck. When he broke the kiss, she looked up at him hopefully. "I'll take that as a 'yes'?"

He nodded, though he still looked very grim. In the dim light she couldn't see his eyes, which added to the effect. "I will put it out of my mind," he said, obviously with a great effort.

She nodded. "Yes. You have to. We both have to." She sighed wearily, running her hand over her eyes. "It was fourteen years ago, Severus."

" _No, it wasn't_ ," he said in a low growl, turning away from her.

" _Yes, it was_ ," she emphasised, grabbing his arm and forcing him to face her again. "And to me? It _feels_ longer. It was a lifetime ago. I was a different person. I can't even believe now that I—that that was _me_."

He nodded again, swallowing. "I understand. And why you cannot talk about it. And—"

"What?" Tilda whispered anxiously.

He shrugged. "Ginny Weasley. I mean—Ginny Potter. The way you are with her."

"The way I _am_?"

"Apologetic."

Tilda sighed. Yes. That was the best word for it. _Apologetic_. That was how she always felt around Ginny. Her guilt would never let it be otherwise. "That's my burden," she said softly. "Don't let it be yours."

Severus led her back to the bed without saying anything and held her tightly, even after falling asleep. As Tilda listened to his slow, even breaths she knew that sleep would not come to her as easily. For one thing, even though he was asleep she felt as though his fierce grip on her belied his claim that he would put it out of his mind. For another, she couldn't help seeing Ginny's face the first time she'd laid eyes on Tilda, the mother of her husband's son. _Please don't hate me, Severus,_ she thought. _And Ginny… I'm so sorry, you have no idea how sorry. But in a way, for you to hate me would be redundant, since I already hate myself so._

In the morning she felt that she hadn't slept well at all, held tightly in Severus's grasp all night, even while running, in her mind, from the demons that had plagued her for fourteen years.

#/#/#

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	39. For Better, For Worse

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Thirty-Nine**

 **For Better, For Worse**

#/#/#

"Are they _ever_ going to get here?"

"Yeah, I'm cold. Can't you warm me up with a spell, Mummy?"

"Ssssh! They'll probably be here soon," Ginny told Ruby and Rory. "And no, I can't warm you up with a spell," she said, dropping her voice. "We're here with Muggles, so we can't do magic _or_ talk about it. Professor Snape put a spell on the barn to make it warm inside, before they left for the registry office, and we'll be in there soon. Today we are Muggles. We're not—well, you know. Don't make me remind you again."

Seeing that they were going to get no help from their father, who was holding Charlotte tightly in his arms and trying to make her laugh by puffing out his cheeks, the twins buried their chins in their mufflers and wrapped their arms around themselves as they hopped from foot to foot in front of the house at Latere Farm, waiting for Tilda, Severus, Teddy, Julian and Tilda's siblings to return from the registry office where they were having a very small, private ceremony. Teddy and Julian were sharing the duties of the best man, each having been put in charge of one of the rings, while Tilda's sister Audrey was her attendant and her brother Jack had also come along to witness the ceremony. (He'd been so late they had almost given him up as a bad job and left him behind.) The others who'd been invited were all waiting for the party to start.

The drive leading to the farmhouse from the road was decorated with strings of tiny white lights and the house itself was dripping with swags of evergreen and holly, with a large wreath on the front door, as it was Christmas Eve. It was the barn, however, that had been cleared out and made fit for the reception, decorated with greenery and lights, equipped with tables and chairs, a dance floor, and a raised dais for a Muggle band.

Ginny couldn't help thinking that she would like to be in the pre-heated barn already, instead of in the cold, waiting to greet The Happy Couple. It wasn't as though she _wasn't_ happy for Tilda and Severus. In truth, she was very glad that they'd found each other. It was far easier for her to convince herself that Tilda and Harry didn't still have something between them. She knew it was mad to think that they might, but there were times when her heart didn't pay attention to what was mad and what wasn't, and anything that helped her to stay on this side of sanity when it came to wondering about her husband was certainly welcome. She only rarely felt threatened by Harry's fame and the many women who thought it appropriate to throw themselves at him because of it, but Tilda hadn't been in love with him because of his fame, and Harry hadn't been in love with those other women. Only one woman was the mother of his son.

Ginny also knew that, despite having occasionally made a small effort— _very_ small—Harry had never truly come to like or respect Severus Snape, and the fact that it was _this_ man who was marrying his son's mother rankled with Harry, though he'd never admit it. She could barely see Harry, as he was bundled up to the eyeballs at Charlotte's insistence. She'd had a fine time ordering Daddy to put on one hat after another, his hood, and two scarves to wrap around it all. His scar wasn't even visible, just his eyes, and sometimes not even that, as his glasses kept fogging up.

A formidable-looking tweedy woman with snow-white hair in a severe bun accosted Harry suddenly. The cold had failed to put even a small amount of colour in her sunken cheeks. "How much longer do you think it will be?" she demanded in an imperious voice that was used to being obeyed. "I've got arthritis and I'm rather feeling the cold. I'd nearly forgotten about her, you know, but her sister sent me an invitation and I felt it was good form to show up with a gift. If only she and her groom felt the same way. All the way from Hampstead in this cold…"

"Erm," Harry said, looking as though he wanted to sink down even further inside his winter coat, "don't know when they'll get here. Soon, probably."

"I shall wait inside," she said huffily, stalking off to the front door of the farmhouse, where Minerva McGonagall was also sheltering her cold-sensitive joints.

When she was out of range, Ginny asked Harry, "Do you know who that was?"

"Unfortunately, yeah. Former headmistress of Greater Whinging primary. Old Soberley. Retired now, I reckon. You think she saw my scar?"

"Harry, Mad-Eye couldn't see your scar right now, you've got so many layers on."

"Mad-Eye can see what I ate for breakfast last week, Ginny. I just—she terrified me when I was a kid. Always calling my uncle. I ended up staying in my cupboard without meals…"

"How awful! I'm—I'm sure she didn't know what would happen."

Harry made a sceptical sound and Ginny sighed. She couldn't bear the thought of the way his family had treated him as a child. More than once since they'd been married he'd thrashed about in the night, having a nightmare, and she'd thought it would turn out to be about Voldemort—her nightmares were usually about Tom Riddle—but quite often it was Harry begging his uncle not to lock him in the cupboard once more. Harry denied that he'd ever begged like that in life, and Ginny did not doubt him, but his dreams seemed to betray the possibility that he'd _wanted_ to beg and only his pride had prevented him.

She pulled Ruby and Rory close to her, hugging them from behind and bending over to whisper, "Come here, Mummy'll keep you warm the old-fashioned way."

But a moment later both girls pulled away from her. "There they are! There they are!" they squealed, pointing at the glow of headlamps making their way through the trees, piercing the grey winter dusk. There was a scramble of other guests spilling out the front door and otherwise organising themselves in front of the house to greet the newlywed couple.

The small crowd was about evenly divided between Hogwarts instructors and Muggle friends and relatives of Tilda's. Ginny's mother had given her an earful about not being invited, talking about all the times she had fed Severus Snape at Order headquarters, evidently forgetting that he didn't usually stay to meals. Professor McGonagall was very dignified in what Ginny recognised as the Muggle dress and coat she habitually wore as a member of the Order. Though the style was years out of date, it suited her. Professor Flitwick looked unintentionally comical in a very small purple morning suit and top hat, while Professors Sprout and Vector could have passed quite well as typical village matrons done up for a formal tea. Theo Nott had told Ginny that he wasn't certain he was coming but had shown up wearing impeccable Muggle formal clothes protected by a heavy woollen coat, looking rather abashed, as though he were dressed for a costume ball and felt ridiculous.

"Snape's a wizard," he mumbled, disgruntled. "Don't know what's wrong with dress robes."

"You look lovely, Theo," Ginny told him, trying not to laugh at his discomfort. He pulled at his bowtie, as though he felt strangled.

Even Filch and Madams Pince, Hooch and Pomfrey had been invited, as well as Professors Borodin and Grubbly-Plank. Dumbledore had, evidently, sent regrets but a lovely gift. Ginny thought it a little sad that the only wizards Severus thought to invite, other than his own son, his son's brother, and his stepson, were his fellow staff-members, none of whom were really close to him, though Ginny knew that Tilda had become friends with Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank. She'd thought that he might perhaps invite some members of the Order, but she'd found, a week before the wedding, that Lupin, Tonks and Shacklebolt were shocked to learn that Severus Snape was getting married, though they were not shocked that they had not received invitations. For her part, Ginny wondered why neither Penelope nor Percy were present, since Penelope _was_ the mother of Severus's son and Percy was Nate's dad, and Severus had practically behaved as Nate's dad for years. But even as she thought this she realised that that might be _precisely_ why neither were in attendance. Plus, Harry had told her that Severus had proposed to Penelope.

What was sadder to her than Severus only inviting other Hogwarts staffers was that Tilda had invited even fewer people. Her immediate family was small, just her brother and sister, her sister-in-law, Nicola, and her nephew, Jimmy. The Latere Farm housekeeper, Beatrice, was there with her husband, as well as the horse-groom, Dorothy, and her boyfriend. There was also a friend who used to work with Tilda, plus the friend's husband, but other than those people and Tilda's old headmistress there was only Tilda's former next-door-neighbor, Mrs Figg, who was a member of the Order but wasn't being invited because of that.

Exactly a month earlier, Tilda, Teddy and Severus had had to go to Australia unexpectedly for Tilda's mother's funeral, so her mother never got the chance to meet the man her daughter was marrying. They were going to meet the week before the wedding, when Mrs Harrison was planning to come to Latere Farm. Her heart hadn't been able to hold out long enough.

It was a decidedly small wedding. Ginny and Harry had had a small ceremony in the drawing room of St Clare's, but they'd erected a large marquee just outside to hold the reception, and members of the Order had to keep stopping reporters from sneaking in. Despite this being the wedding of the mother of Harry Potter's son, there seemed to be no danger of wizarding reporters crashing the party. It helped that there had been no announcement in _The Daily Prophet_. Everyone invited was under strict orders not to tell anyone. (Nate had forgotten when he'd told his grandmother.) Ginny forced a smile as the cars swung into place before the waiting guests. She was truly happy for Tilda and Severus. She was more worried about Harry's reaction, though he'd sworn that he was happy as well. _I wish you sounded more convinced when you say that,_ she'd thought grimly, an irrational stab of jealousy piercing her heart.

"Congratulations!" Minerva McGonagall said warmly to them, leaning in to kiss both Severus's and Tilda's cheeks. Severus was smiling quite naturally, as though he did this every day, and he looked _happy_. Tilda was glowing, even while bundled up. Ginny moved forward herself to wish them congratulations and tried not to wince when she saw the insincerity in Harry's face as he awkwardly shook hands with Severus while holding Charlotte. He missed kissing Tilda's cheek, his lips instead brushing her hat briefly.

Once inside the magically-warmed barn, they could shed their coats and admire each other's finery. Ginny felt a little dowdy in something she was certain had been a Muggle girl's party dress a good fifty years earlier. Her mother had taken it out of mothballs in The Burrow's ghoul-infested attic, making Ginny sneeze. At first the pale green bodice and billowing forest-green skirt had looked all right; beside the other dusty things in the attic it had seemed positively grand. She'd simply told her mother that she needed it for a party on Christmas Eve, and when Nate spilled the news to his grandmother about the wedding, that was when the rants about not being invited began. Now she wished she'd simply gone shopping for something new and appropriate, something that looked like proper modern Muggle clothes. But she hadn't been able to muster the enthusiasm for a shopping trip for Tilda and Severus's wedding. _It doesn't matter what I wear_ , she'd thought. _Everyone should be looking at the bride, anyway._

The evening passed in a whirlwind of colour and noise. Ginny felt a bit overwhelmed, as though she wasn't quite all _there_. Just keeping track of her daughters seemed enormously difficult. She occasionally accepted Harry's invitations to dance, glad to let him steer her around the floor while her mind wandered. Someone decided that it would be "cute" for Ginny and Tilda to each dance with their stepsons, but while Tilda seemed to enjoy stooping over to let Julian lead her, it was a bit trying for Ginny to dance with Teddy, as he hadn't had any lessons and trod on her toes even more than she remembered Neville doing at the Yule Ball. (He was just as apologetic.) She smiled tolerantly at him, her heart skipping a beat because of how very much he looked like Harry in their matching formal clothes. As she moved to the perimeter of the room again she saw Harry holding out his hand to Tilda. They began to dance, laughing at something Ginny couldn't hear on the other side of the dance floor.

Teddy went off to talk to Nate, for which Ginny was grateful. She didn't want him to wonder why she couldn't take her eyes off his dad dancing with his mum. Turning away from them, feeling as unable to breathe as though she'd been punched in the stomach, she immediately collided with Theo Nott, who looked down at her kindly.

"Care to dance?" he asked softly. Ginny moved her mouth soundlessly but Theo spoke again before she could get any words out: "I admit that I have ulterior motives."

Ginny smiled grimly at Theo in response to his invitation to dance. "Now, now, Professor Nott. I'm a married woman."

"I know, and your husband is dancing with the bride, so I thought that if I asked you to dance and we edged close to them, then I could cut in on them, not having danced with the bride yet, and you could dance again with your husband without looking like you want to scratch out the bride's eyes for putting her hands on him. People tend to think it's pretty bad form, at weddings, to scratch out the bride's eyes."

Ginny laughed as Theo steered them around various other dancing couples. "I promise. No scratching out _anyone's_ eyes." She glanced quickly in Tilda and Harry's direction before lowering her voice. "Please tell me I'm not being _that_ obvious. I really do like Tilda."

Theo shrugged. "So do I. But, well, you had this expression on your face for a moment…"

Ginny sighed. "Working on that," she said wearily.

He grinned. "So, it's a work in progress, then? How about this: _I'll_ hate her and _you_ can be the gracious one."

She laughed again and shook her head. "No, no, she doesn't deserve that. What happened—it's not her fault."

He nodded, smiling ruefully. "That's good, because we've become friends. She helped a few of my students with their Transfiguration essays last term. But it's funny, whenever I hear someone say, 'It's not her fault,' or, 'It's not your fault,' I always think of you and Harry in the hospital wing with me, after I woke up, and both of you telling me it wasn't my fault. The diary…"

"You didn't know. Riddle fooled you, like he fooled me."

Theo looked at her intently. "Something—something I never told you was that he—he told me some things about you when I wrote in the diary. He remembered you. From before."

Ginny was startled. "Wh—what? What did he tell you?" She felt like her heart had sped up.

He sighed. "Things you'd written about Harry. So I was probably the last person who should have been surprised when you two got together."

The look in his eyes was unmistakable. "Oh, Theo," she said helplessly.

"I'm fine. No problem. Although, for a while, I stupidly thought that if Harry still hadn't noticed you… I mean, you and that Ravenclaw git had broken up. Riddle wasn't exactly encouraging. I—I liked watching you fly," he added, turning a little pink. "But he told me that a Slytherin was probably the last thing you'd be interested in—"

"You're not a _thing_ ," she interrupted him swiftly before ducking her head guiltily. "And, well, he may have had a point, but only because the last time I befriended a smooth, winning Slytherin— _him_ , in other words—he turned out to be—" Ginny stopped herself when she saw Theo's face. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—you know I know you're nothing like Riddle, yeah?"

He gave her a sad half-smile, nodding. "Well, it's true that no one will ever accuse me of being smooth and winning. I'm just saying. If there's anyone who knows about being irrationally jealous, and still liking the person who's causing the jealousy, it's me."

Ginny wished they were dancing to a fast number, so that he wasn't holding her so closely. She knew she shouldn't encourage him, yet she wasn't sure how to _dis_ courage him without being rude. Theo was her friend. "My jealousy is stupid and childish and _my_ problem," she said, looking toward Harry and Tilda. "Although not as much of one as it used to be. Tonight it's rearing its ugly head, but I suppose that's to be expected. And Teddy is such a dear."

They had finally moved close enough to Tilda and Harry for Theo to cut in. Ginny was relieved, as the conversation with Theo had taken some very uncomfortable turns. He nodded at Ginny, a sad smile still pulling at the corner of his mouth, before asking to make off with the bride. Harry made a joke she wasn't listening to very closely. She only knew he'd been joking because Theo and Tilda laughed. She laughed too, after a moment, rather feebly, wondering what had been said. But then it didn't matter, because Harry had her in his arms and Theo was twirling Tilda so that her ivory-coloured skirt belled out around her. Ginny looked up at Harry for only a moment before he gathered her closer to him, so all she could see was his neck.

"Are you okay?" he whispered.

She instinctively tried to shut down her emotions so he wouldn't suspect that she'd been extremely jealous of his dancing with Tilda. She knew it was stupid and didn't want him to know just _how_ stupid she'd been. She pictured him on their wedding day, standing at the foot of the stairs in St Clare's Chapel, waiting for her, and when she looked up at him she was able to say, quite truthfully, "I was just thinking of our wedding day."

He raised one eyebrow. "Really? Is it so awful being married to me? You looked like you wanted to kill yourself. Or me."

She tried to laugh but failed and decided to confess. "You caught me," she admitted, grimacing.

Harry wrapped his arms around Ginny more tightly and kissed her brow. "I was thinking of our wedding day, too. You were—and are—so beautiful…"

Ginny burrowed into his arms, feeling a bit better after confessing. The music continued and she closed her eyes, just knowing Harry's arms around her. A comforting warmth crept into her heart, which seemed to be beating with the music.

When the song ended they walked off the dance floor holding hands and Ginny wondered whether there was any place they could slip off to for a wee bit of snogging. She simply felt like being mindlessly physical with her husband, as stupid as she knew that would sound if she said it aloud. However, the small groups of guests edging the dance floor made it impossible to make a clean getaway and the next thing Ginny knew Minerva was hailing them.

"Harry! I've just been speaking to some old friends of yours," she said brightly. "Ginny! Come meet them." Ginny suspected that she'd had more than a little champagne, as Minerva tended to become expansive under the influence of alcohol. She grimaced only for a moment at Harry before smiling as cheerfully as she could and turning toward her headmistress. She saw to her horror that one of the people to whom Minerva was referring was the former headmistress of Harry's primary school. She strongly doubted that Harry would classify her as an "old friend."

"Hello, Harry," Old Soberley said archly, as though he'd been summoned to her office yet again and she expected him to confess to something. Ginny saw the muscles around his mouth tense.

"Hello, Mrs Soberley," he said evenly, his jaw as stiff as Ginny had ever seen it.

"Minerva was just telling me that she is the headmistress of the school where you teach. I must say—if I kept a list of former pupils I would never have dreamed would become teachers, your name would be at the top!"

Harry made a feeble attempt to smile. "Well, Minerva's predecessor talked me and my wife into it. We teach together."

Her eyebrows flew up into her perfectly coifed white hair. "Husband and wife team? A bit unorthodox, isn't that? As it is, I was telling Minerva that if two unmarried teachers under my supervision had started _consorting_ , let alone marrying each other, I'd have sacked the pair of them faster than you could blink! I never tolerated fraternisation when I was running my school. Of course, _some_ things have changed about that, as well."

Old Soberley looked meaningfully at the couple standing to her right. Ginny could tell that they were both Muggles, probably friends of Tilda's, but Ginny had no idea who they were nor why Harry's old headmistress should be looking at them with such obvious disapproval. The wife clutched her husband's arm, smiling. "I know I probably shouldn't have started going out with the new headmaster after you retired, Eleanor, but we hit it off so well, and after we got married I sacked myself, so technically we were no longer fraternising."

Harry stared at her with his jaw dropped. "Pip!" he squeaked, making it sound like he'd had rather too much to drink. Ginny stared at him, and so did the woman he was calling _Pip_. He immediately recovered, saying, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't call you that, probably, but Tilda talked about you and that was what she called you—"

Pip recovered and smiled again, clutching her husband's arm even more tightly. He was very distinguished looking, his brown hair tinged by a bit of grey at the temples and brow, his dark eyes crinkling when he smiled. He was so close-shaven he appeared to have groomed himself within the previous half-hour at the most. His pin-striped suit was immaculate. Pip seemed very proud of "having" him, as though she'd beat out other competing bidders at a livestock auction for a particularly fine bullock.

"Pip is fine. We're all adults. It would be weird if you called me by my maiden name, anyway, when I'm properly _Mrs deWinter_ now. And may I introduce my husband, Hillary?"

Harry started to laugh and Ginny subtly moved her foot so that she was standing on his. The laugh turned into a cough and while Harry continued to hack into his fist, preventing him from shaking hands with Hillary deWinter, Theo arrived at his elbow with Tilda and Severus and started slapping Harry on the back vigorously. "I say, Harry! Something get stuck in there?"

Harry's face was quite red and Ginny could see by the upturned corners of his mouth that he was still in danger of laughing. She distracted Pip by saying, "I can see that I'll have to introduce myself, since Harry can't. I'm Ginny Potter." She extended her hand to Pip and Hillary, her foot still planted on Harry's. Theo, who also looked in danger of bursting into laughter, was continuing to slap Harry on the back. "And this is our colleague, Theo Nott," Ginny said, waving her hand at him. He nodded at Pip and her husband before turning back to Harry, frowning deeply, which Ginny was convinced was the only thing keeping him from guffawing. He seemed to be having far too much fun hitting Harry on the back and Ginny thought the situation couldn't have been much more ridiculous if Luna had been there, talking about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks and Cornelius Fudge baking goblins into pies.

Old Soberley frowned with disapproval at Harry, who was finally starting to calm down. She was first to acknowledge the arrival of the bride and groom. "Tilda! I was just saying to Minerva—if you'd starting going out with one of the other teachers working under me, you'd have been for the sack! I must say, you're very lucky Minerva is so lenient!"

Minerva McGonagall looked momentarily affronted by the idea that she was 'lenient' and Tilda seemed quite shaken by this tactless statement. "Well," she said, hesitating at first, "I'd have deserved the sack. After all, you don't want a madwoman teaching impressionable young minds, and since the only teacher who was a single male was Edwin Axminster, if I'd started going out with him that would have proved that I'd gone absolutely barking mad!"

" _Ha_!" Ginny burst out, the dam suddenly breaking from her trying to keep Harry from laughing and from watching Theo try not to laugh as well. Once the laughter started it was contagious. Even taciturn Old Soberley was roaring at Tilda's comment, along with the deWinters, Severus and Minerva, who no longer seemed affronted. Harry and Theo finally let themselves laugh, and it wasn't at Mr deWinter's name, so Ginny removed her foot from her husband's and Theo stopped thumping Harry's dinner jacket.

Old Soberley raised the teacup she was holding in a toast to Tilda, actually looking quite handsome with a genuine smile on her face. "Good show, Tilda. And quite right. If you'd gone out with our Edwin I've have known you were either doing drugs or had gone round the bend."

"We were quite lucky to get Tilda," Minerva affirmed. "She's been such a help with the students who need a bit of assistance with their writing, especially. We didn't have anyone on the staff who was prepared to do such work, and she—"

"Anyone?" Hillary deWinter interrupted, looking appalled. Ginny bit her lip. The look on Minerva's face was not a happy one, even if she was partly drunk. Minerva _never_ countenanced anyone interrupting her. "Surely _all_ of your teachers should be prepared to help the students with their writing, especially those teaching literature courses."

Ginny breathed a sigh of relief. Despite Minerva's uncertain sobriety she hadn't let slip the true nature of Hogwarts. "Well, you see," Ginny started to explain, "it's a school for students with special _abilities_ , and many of the subjects require a great deal of writing that the students are expected to handle on their own. Most do, but a handful feel overwhelmed."

"Ah," deWinter said, nodding and rocking back and forth on his heels and the balls of his feet. "I see, I see... one of _those_ schools. Idiot savants, that sort of thing? A lot of dotty geniuses who sometimes forget to put on their own trousers in the morning?" He chortled but no one else joined in the laughter. "They say Einstein would sometimes leave his house without his trousers, you know. Not an easy thing, to teach that sort of pupil, I daresay. What's it called again?"

"She said it was something like _Wartharts_ ," Pip said, frowning distastefully at this name.

" _Hogwarts_ ," they all said instinctively, in unison. Ginny felt like biting her tongue as soon as it was out of her mouth, but that wouldn't have done much good, as Minerva, Harry, Theo, Severus and Tilda had said it as well.

" _Hogwarts_ ," deWinter said slowly, clearly also disliking this name. "Never heard of it."

"Wait a minute," Pip said suddenly, looking shrewdly at Harry. "Minerva said you'd gone there, Harry. Are you telling me that you were called up on the carpet so much when you were a kid because you're some sort of _genius_?"

Harry looked quite alarmed, as though he might suddenly be required to make some tangible display of his 'genius', and Ginny didn't think that the names of the top twenty defensive spells would qualify. She turned to Pip, saying, "Harry and I met when we were at school, and Theo was in his year. Severus was also at school when Harry's dad and mum were there."

This attempt to deflect Pip's interest in Harry and his school fell on deaf ears, however. Pip appeared to have had a revelation. "Wait a minute. That explains a bit…"

Harry looked like laughing was the last thing on his mind now. "That explains what?" he asked nervously, his voice going up a little.

"Well, that last summer that Tilda spent in Little Whinging. It was all over the news that you'd blown up your house. The police were after you and everything. But when they had the headmaster of that boys' school—wayward boys or something—"

"St Brutus's," Harry said, nodding. "For Incurably Criminal Boys," he added with a grimace.

"Yeah! That was it! Well, he said on the telly that he'd never heard of you. I thought that was a bit rich. You know, they're supposed to be rehabilitating boys but you firebombed your own house and were on the run." Pip's husband looked with alarm at Harry, backing up slightly.

"I never went there," Harry said swiftly. "That was just what my uncle told people. He was, erm, a bit cross that my cousin hadn't been accepted to—to Hogwarts, you see. My name had been down since I was quite small. If your parents were both students they, erm, do a test when you're very young, to determine whether you can get in. My uncle always resented having to take me in, since my parents were geniuses but died in a car crash. And Dudley didn't qualify, so Uncle Vernon wasn't very pleased about that, either."

Old Soberley nodded knowingly. "Ah, yes, that explains quite a lot about Vernon and Petunia Dursley. Though it doesn't explain very much about you, Harry. Your marks were never very, shall we say, _impressive_." She sighed. "I fear we may have failed you. They say that the most brilliant children can sometimes underperform in environments that have an inadequate amount of intellectual stimulation. Of course, you know what we were up against, with some of those families from Greater Whinging…" She shook her head, gazing at Harry with actual tears in her eyes, as though she had indeed failed him as an educator.

"Oh, erm, that's all right. At Hogwarts I was in my element," he said quickly.

"So," Pip jumped in again, "how _did_ your house blow up? Chemistry experiment or something?"

Seizing on this, Harry said immediately, "Actually, that's just what it was. I told Dudley not to touch anything, too, when I went out that evening, but that was too much to ask, I reckon. Good thing he wasn't killed. He was closest. I was in the next town, watching the telly and talking to some footballers at a pub when suddenly I saw on the news that my house had blown up and I was suspected. Bloody surprised about that, I can tell you," Harry added, smiling feebly.

"But why didn't you turn yourself in, since you were innocent? Surely it would all have been sorted," Pip persisted. Ginny had a strong urge to kick her in the shins, or to hex her.

"Well, I didn't think I'd do that well in prison, did I?" Harry said reasonably. He laughed and added, "I felt lucky to survive primary school! I knew my uncle had told them I was to blame. He'd tried to kick me out a year earlier. Other than the house being destroyed he must have been pretty happy with the chance to get rid of me _and_ keep me from going back to Hogwarts."

"That still doesn't explain," Old Soberley said, frowning at Tilda, "how _you_ became involved with this 'Hogwarts,' Tilda."

Tilda hesitated for a moment before saying, "Well, when Teddy turned eleven, Severus here came from the school to tell me that he'd been accepted, and when a teacher, erm, retired and a vacancy suddenly opened up last Easter, Minerva asked me whether I would fill in until she found a permanent replacement. And then she asked me to be the permanent replacement."

"Teddy?" Pip said, confused.

"Yes. I thought—Audrey said that she'd told you about my son," Tilda said, reddening.

"Yeah. It's just that, well, no offense, but don't you think he's a bit _stunted_ for an eleven-year-old?" Ginny frowned. What on earth was Pip talking about? Teddy had had a growth spurt recently and was several inches taller than Ginny now. She was rather small, it was true, but Teddy was no smaller than most boys his age. Nate was only a little taller than him.

Ginny saw Tilda swallow. "He's thirteen. On May Day he'll be fourteen."

"Fourteen!" Pip said. "That's even worse. I mean, honestly, it's fabulous that he's a little genius and everything, but don't you think you should have a specialist in growth disorders look him over? A fourteen-year-old should _not_ look like an eight-year-old!"

Tilda and Severus looked helplessly at each other but a moment later Ginny understood what the problem was: Pip had mistaken little Julian for Tilda's son. She saw that Tilda realised this almost at the same moment. "Oh, no, Pip!" she said, laughing. "I see. You thought I was dancing with _Teddy_. It was _Julian_ , Severus's son! He's just had his eighth birthday, a few days ago, and he's tall for his age!"

In a moment they were all laughing at Pip's mistake, including Pip, who was slightly red. "Oh, God, Til, I'm sorry! How stupid of me. Yeah, you know, come to think of it, Audrey mentioned that you were going to be a stepmum, too. Well, then, that means I haven't seen _your_ son yet. Where is he?" she asked, craning her neck to look at a group of children on the other side of the dance floor. "Is he the boy with the reddish hair? The tall one next to Harry and Ginny's son?"

They all turned to see Teddy, Nate and Teddy's cousin Jimmy drinking punch and talking. On the dance floor, Ruby and Rory were hopping enthusiastically to something with a disco beat and Julian was gently leading little Charlotte in a funny sort of hopping dance as well. The adults sharing the floor smiled indulgently at the children.

Ginny froze as she realised that Pip had thought that _she_ was Teddy's mother. It made sense. She was married to Harry, after all, and Teddy was the spitting image of his father. When she and Tilda had each been dancing with their _step_ sons Pip must have thought they were dancing with their _sons_. Ginny felt a pang as she remembered yet again the longing to have Harry's son that she'd experienced during her first lesson with Teddy.

"Erm," Tilda stammered, hesitating.

"And what's your son called, Harry? Goodness, I thought Tilda's was stunted, but yours is positively a giant! I mean, you would have finished school, when? Ninety-seven? Ninety-eight? You didn't wait long to start a family, did you two?" Pip said, including Ginny in this.

Ginny bit her lip and looked desperately at Harry. _Here we go again_ , she thought. "I wasn't dancing with my son," she said as bravely as she could. "I'm Teddy's stepmother. He's a very sweet boy. Tilda did a wonderful job," she added with a smile that pained her.

Pip was the one frozen now, but a second later, she slapped her brow. "Of course! Fourteen on May Day!" Ginny could see her doing the calculations in her head. "That's what you were up to that summer!" she said to Tilda. "You wouldn't take my calls, you were avoiding me like I had the plague… You must have been hiding Harry from the police! And you left in August—" The incomplete sentence hung in the silence. It was as though they could all hear it despite Pip's having stopped: … _because you were pregnant with a sixteen-year-old's child_.

Old Soberley looked as affronted as though she were the queen and someone had defecated on a Union Jack and set it afire. Harry looked defiantly at her, his jaw clenched. "Something wrong, Mrs Soberley?" he asked her very pointedly. She recoiled from him.

"I think—I think it's getting a bit late for me," she said shakily. "I just need to find my coat…"

"I'll get my _son_ to fetch it for you, Eleanor," Tilda said stiffly, glaring at Pip, who looked highly amused, while her husband was as scandalised as Old Soberley. "Do you need your coat as well, Pip? Hillary?" Tilda added pointedly.

Ginny wanted to sink into the ground and disappear. Her face was very hot and she imagined what Old Soberley and the deWinters were thinking, every sordid bit of it—though Pip seemed to find it more amusing than offensive. Ginny still heard whispers between the students at Hogwarts, and while shopping in Diagon Alley, as much as she tried to block it out. She knew that ever since Teddy's existence had become public knowledge there were those in the wizarding community who thought her extremely stupid for having married Harry, because, of course, he must be cheating on her with every witch and Muggle he could get his hands on.

Ron had asked her more than once what Harry was doing on certain dates because "alert readers" had written to _The Quibbler_ with "tips" that Harry Potter had been seen with other women—and, occasionally, men. Ginny always knew exactly where Harry had been at these times (usually with her or the children), as Ron thought she would. He didn't actually suspect Harry but simply wanted to have the facts at his disposal to put the rumour-mongers in their places.

Despite a lack of facts, Rita Skeeter had written a speculative article in _Witch Weekly_ about whether it was "safe" for Harry to teach at Hogwarts, not because he might prey on the older students but because he might prey on their _mothers_. Ron gave Rita a piece of his mind for that and wrote a retaliatory article about Rita's private life, full of hearsay and innuendo, but Ginny finally convinced him not to print it, as she didn't want to start a mudslinging war with Rita Skeeter. She remembered what had happened to poor Hermione and didn't want Ron—or Harry—to start getting letters full of bubotuber pus. It was bad enough that Ginny occasionally received letters of 'condolences' from witches whose husbands had cheated on them. She always ripped these up in fury, as Harry had _not_ technically cheated on her, but reading them was still like sprinkling salt in an open wound. She didn't know why anyone thought it would be _comforting_ to her to read such things. She didn't tell Harry about the letters.

After his old headmistress had departed, Harry wanted to dance with Ginny again, looking much more cheerful. "Old walrus," he said as he took her hand and led her to the dance floor again.

"Pardon me?" Ginny said, her brows flying up.

"I meant Old Soberley, of course, not _you_. Never _you,_ " he added, his hand pressing against the small of her back as he put her head on his shoulder with his other hand. He seemed to understand how she was feeling and she put her head down gratefully.

"But—why a _walrus_? she asked quietly, locking her arms around him.

Harry laughed softly. "Something Teddy told me about his summer holiday. I'll tell you later."

"Thank you, Harry," she said softly into his chest, though neither of them said why she was thanking him.

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	40. The Spanner

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 **Replay**

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 **Chapter Forty**

 **The Spanner**

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"Bloody hell," Draco Malfoy said, stumbling into the dining room and flinging himself into a chair. "My last day of freedom."

"Hm?" Blaise said absently, skimming through a thick, dusty tome that had been mouldering in a corner of one of the chambers beneath the Malfoy drawing room long enough that dust rose from the pages each time he turned one. Crabbe and Goyle sat on the opposite side of the table, also going through large old spellbooks, while Draco's mother slept late. Again.

Draco was weary of the charade of being Percy Weasley. Because Molly Weasley kept telling him about job openings at the Ministry and actually _working_ was the last thing he wanted to do, he'd told her that he'd taken a position as a personal secretary to a wealthy wizard in Bath who imported material for robes and exported brooms and cauldrons. He had to explain where he disappeared to every day in some manner. He wanted to spend as little time as possible _as_ Percy Weasley, and this way he could just be himself every day, at his real house, before reappearing at The Burrow. Then, after locking his bedroom door at night, he would Apparate back to Wiltshire again and sleep in his own bed in his own body (sometimes with the added fringe benefit of Pansy in his bed). He would be awakened bright and early the next morning by the _real_ Percy Weasley so he could briefly change into the third Weasley son and Apparate back to The Burrow to have breakfast with Molly and Arthur Weasley before going to 'work'.

Blaise had been sceptical about this plan at first, but as it limited the amount of time Draco had to be transformed using the costly Polyjuice Potion, which was also very time-consuming to make, he agreed to give Draco spending money so it would appear that he was indeed employed. However, Blaise was growing progressively disgruntled about that. Draco was somewhat disgruntled himself. "I _said_ ," he whinged loudly, as no one had taken notice of him, " _my last day of freedom_."

Blaise looked up, frowning. "Freedom from what?"

"From pretending to be that brat's father, that's what," Draco responded just as Percy entered the room, carrying a fresh pot of coffee and a plate of eggs.

"Ah, Weatherby! The egg-man! Just the thing to start the day," Blaise said as Percy set the plate before him. He didn't notice Percy hesitate as he poured coffee into Draco's waiting cup.

"The Hogwarts summer term ends tomorrow. Penelope wants me to take the brat first this year. God, last summer _crawled._ That kid is so _nosy_ and _boring_ ," he said, as though Nate's father were _not_ in the room, waiting on them. "Though he's not as bad as the other kids," Draco conceded, with one eye on Percy, before looking at Blaise again, who was shovelling eggs into his mouth. "I should have known that the Weasel and Loon would have a boatload of—" Draco sputtered, casting about for the right words; "—miniature loony weasels. And I'm tired of hearing, for the last _six months_ , about how Snape didn't invite Weasel's parents to his wedding. I still can't believe anyone agreed to _marry_ that old blood-traitor, but it figures it's a _Muggle_. I'm sick and tired of it all. I can't believe how long you lot have been looking for that spell, and you've got _nothing_!"

"Well, if you'd _help_ look…" Blaise said pointedly, glaring at Draco before suddenly sneezing three times.

"Bless you, sir," Percy said immediately, pouring coffee for Blaise, who nodded.

"Thank you, Weatherby," Blaise said pleasantly. He didn't see any point to treating Percy poorly, but he didn't have to pretend to _be_ him, day in and day out. Percy had worked out very well as a servant and seemed utterly oblivious to what they were doing. He just followed orders and evidently found nothing odd about going from being a clerk in Gibraltar to a butler in Wiltshire, nor about not being able to leave the house, and about the Malfoy home having none of the modern conveniences he'd come to know while living and working as a Muggle. He didn't even seem to mind that he received no wages. It certainly helped, of course, that Blaise had placed a spell on him that was similar to the spells that had formerly been used on house-elves to keep them in line. "You could at least help to make the Polyjuice Potion," Blaise groused, blowing on his coffee. "It's for your benefit, after all."

Draco snorted. "You need to feed _him_ a bit more, that's what would benefit me. That bloody cow thinks I'm wasting away because _he's_ so thin, so she stuffs me every morning with enough food to choke a horse. Meanwhile, I'm getting fat," he complained, leaning back and patting his stomach, which was noticeably straining his belt.

"So run up and down the stairs, swing from the chandeliers, I don't care. We're stretched to the limit," Blaise said, pointing at his empty plate with his fork. "Your mother won't lift a finger. We haven't got food to spare. If you've so much at your house—"

"It is _not_ 'my' house," Draco snapped. " _This_ is my house."

"—then nick some food from them and bring it here, force-feed him yourself. Or get your _girlfriend_ to bring food. All she's good for now is possibly spilling everything to the Ministry. I'd say she's only good for when you're randy, but she doesn't even seem—"

"Draco!" Crabbe said suddenly, staring at the page before him.

"Pansy wouldn't tell the Ministry anything," Draco retorted. "She's one of us! _You_ force-feed him, you love him so much. I don't want more to do with him than absolutely necessary!"

Percy poured coffee for Crabbe and Goyle before moving to the doorway. "Fine," Blaise said. "And perhaps Pansy would like to know how much _you_ love taking every opportunity you can to shag the Mudblood mother of his kid."

"Hark how you talk about shagging people's _mothers_ ," Draco growled, swearing crossly when he lifted his coffee to drink it and found it even hotter than when it was first poured.

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Percy hoped that Draco couldn't tell that he'd subtly increased the temperature of his coffee. It was a spell he'd been working on for a little while, but in that he had to do it without speaking and without a wand it was extremely difficult and yielded only a small result.

"Blaise!" Crabbe tried this time, just as Percy went through the swinging door to the kitchen. Percy leaned his head on the door when he was on the other side of it, closing his eyes, trying _not_ to see Penelope in his mind's eye, Penelope with _him_ , though when he pictured them together Draco Malfoy was in his own body, calling her a filthy Mudblood as he assaulted her…

"What is it, Crabbe?" Percy heard Blaise ask.

"I think—I think I've found what we've been looking for," Crabbe said softly. Percy had to strain to hear through the door. He opened it a crack, so he could see the four sitting at the table.

Blaise raced around to Crabbe's side of the table, running his finger down the page and nodding, a smile pulling at his mouth. "Bloody hell! Pigs might fly… I could kiss you, Crabbe!" he said, grinning. Crabbe backed up when he heard that and Percy could no longer see him.

Percy let the door close again, staggered to the kitchen table and sat, feeling winded. _They've got it._ His mind reeled. _They can do it, they can do what they want_.

And no one knew what they were up to but him. He'd actually had many opportunities to leave, unbeknownst to Blaise, Draco and Narcissa, but each time he was on the verge of walking out the door he'd stayed. He told himself it was for two reasons: to read the rejected spellbooks that did not have the information Blaise Zabini sought, so he could rebuild his magical knowledge, and so, with this knowledge, he could stop them. It had taken much longer than he'd thought to learn to do magic again, and his magic was very feeble, since he needed to perform most spells nonverbally, to avoid Blaise, Draco or Narcissa detecting what he was doing, and he lacked a wand. Until he acquired a wand he had only one really effective weapon at his disposal: sabotage.

He'd been waiting months and months, after having thought of the perfect way to throw a spanner into the works. Thinking of it had been the hard part. Acquiring the means to do it had been relatively easy. He removed his secret weapon from his shirt pocket, holding it up and admiring the way it shone in the morning light.

It was a single silver hair from the head of Narcissa Malfoy.

#/#/#

Draco Malfoy rubbed his eyes sleepily; he yawned and stretched, glad that he could go back to his real bed once he returned to Wiltshire, after breakfasting with the Weasleys. He only had to be Percy for an hour or so before reverting to his own form for a morning of further sleep, then an afternoon of trying to work out what exactly was in the book Crabbe, Goyle and Zabini insisted contained the spell they needed.

It was nothing short of miraculous that he'd survived the summer without hexing Nate, the elder Weasleys, Percy's brothers—especially the twins—Percy's nieces and nephews, and Potter and his son. Now that the Hogwarts autumn term had begun he was very glad that he no longer had to see Nate or the Potters, and he even saw the other Weasleys—except for Molly and Arthur—far less frequently. Free from fatherhood until the Christmas holiday! Unfortunately, that was fast approaching now that it was almost the end of November, but he still found it easier to be cheerful in the morning knowing that he didn't have to see Nate, World's Most Annoying Young Wizard. _Wouldn't you know Percy Weasley's kid would be another swot?_ he thought before he Apparated to The Burrow. In the pocket of the pyjamas he'd donned to replace the ones with the Malfoy crest on the breast he carried a vial of Polyjuice Potion from the newly-made batch.

He climbed into Percy's bed and moved about, to make it look slept-in, pulling the covers over his head and rolling about on the old mattress before dropping Percy's pyjamas carelessly on the floor and finding some drab, colourless robes to wear. Standing before the mirrored wardrobe door, he took a swig of Polyjuice Potion, unlocked the bedroom door, and waited for it to take effect. He grunted in agony, as always, while the changes came over him, and squeezed his eyes shut against the pain. However, today there was a peculiar sensation of someone _pulling_ on his chest; a strange _weight_ was sitting on his ribs and there was an odd _absence_ between his legs.

" _Aaaaaaaah!_ " he screamed when he opened his eyes, staring into the mirror. His body was not remotely like Percy's. He slapped his hand over his mouth, knowing that the high-pitched scream he'd let out would immediately be investigated. He was glad the door was still locked. _Damn and bugger_ , he thought, remembering that it _wasn't_ locked when Arthur Weasley threw open the door, his wife right behind him. They had their wands drawn and appeared shocked to find someone other than their son in his bedroom.

"Erm," Draco started to say, staring at Molly Weasley's aghast face. Draco wondered whether he had found a way to give her a heart attack. This didn't usually kill wizards, who knew how to deal with such things, but it _did_ have entertainment potential.

Arthur Weasley collected his wits first. "Well! Mrs Malfoy. Erm, Percy didn't mention that you were coming to breakfast." His voice was pitched far higher than usual. He cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows at his wife, his meaning clear.

 _Buggeration_. _Now they think my mother is shagging Percy Weasley!_ "It was—unplanned," he said awkwardly in his mother's voice. _That was stupid_. _Say something to make it clear that they're not sleeping together! Anything to make it bloody clear that they're not shagging!_ It was bad enough that anyone knew about his mother and Zabini. _This_ getting out would be far worse.

But nothing came to mind. Why _else_ would a middle-aged woman be in Percy's room and robes? He saw where Molly's eyes had gone: to the carefully dishevelled bed, which seemed like it had been rumpled by enthusiastic shagging rather than mere sleep. _I am going to kill someone._ Draco seethed. _Heads will roll. The Cruciatus Curse will be used and abused_.

"Well," Molly Weasley said, sounding less jovial than her husband. And while Draco did enjoy the idea of Molly Weasley's image of her golden boy changing, he wasn't convinced that that would work well with the _plan_. If he, as Percy, was eventually going to kidnap the kids, he had to continue to get along with the family, including Molly. "I'm so pleased," she said with the world's most strained smile, "that you and Percy are on such—good terms."

Draco wanted very badly to laugh at the agony on her face. He'd never associated a particular expression with needing to sit on the loo all day, but if he had, Molly's current expression would be it. "You'll have to excuse me, Mrs Weasley. I have an urgent appointment this morning. Percy asked me to give his apologies. His employer requested that he arrive early today so he's already Apparated to work," he explained in his mother's most genteel voice.

"Would—would _you_ care to join us for breakfast, Mrs Malfoy?" Molly asked, her stiff smile still in place. Draco thought her face might crack if she moved it. He also doubted that Molly Weasley _wanted_ to eat breakfast with Narcissa Malfoy. Asking was just good form. He was tempted to accept, because it appeared to be _killing_ her.

"No, thank you. I'm meeting a friend." He continued to swear silently in his head while he spoke to the Weasleys. "But thank you for asking," he added, rather torn between enjoying their discomfort and wanting to be back in his own home and his own body.

"Of course, of course," Arthur Weasley said, guiding his wife from the room. "Well, we won't keep you. Nice to see you again, Mrs Malfoy," he lied unconvincingly. 'Mrs Malfoy' nodded, closed the door, sighed with relief, and Apparated to Wiltshire.

'Mrs Malfoy' had at least one murder on the day's agenda.

#/#/#

" _When can I go out in public again?_ " Draco growled at Blaise Zabini. He didn't care that Blaise looked like he wanted to hex the nose off his face, he was _tired_ of being cooped up. It was nearly as bad as Azkaban, and in some ways it was worse. He didn't have to see or contemplate his mother and Zabini being together when he was in prison. "And," he added, _sotto voce_ , "what are you doing about keeping my mother from sabotaging us again?"

Blaise was grim as he surveyed the potion's bubbling surface. He was no happier than Draco. He'd been shocked the first time Draco had turned up wearing Narcissa's body. Clearly her hair had been put in the potion, rather than Percy's, but Blaise did not know _why_ , _when_ , nor how to stop it. Batch after batch of very expensive potion had been ruined over a period of months and each time they'd had to start from scratch. Blaise wasn't even certain that Narcissa was doing it. He'd wondered whether Draco was protesting too much. He doubted that it was Crabbe or Goyle, their lack of brain power being the chief reason, plus their lack of ambition. Were it not for their willingness to pummel anyone Draco wanted pummelled he'd have wondered long ago how they came to be Slytherins.

That willingness to obey Draco came in handy now. He refused to try any new potion, and as neither Narcissa nor Blaise were willing it came down to Crabbe and Goyle. The second time that Crabbe had tried some nothing happened—or so they'd thought. So they had Goyle test it—and he became Crabbe. Both denied having tampered with it and Blaise believed them. However, when Draco saw what happened to Goyle he grabbed the ladle, held his nose, and drank, soon becoming the third Crabbe in the room.

"What do you think you're doing?" Zabini had bellowed.

As he poured some potion into his hip flask, Draco said, "For once I can take Pansy out. I can't do that when I'm _me_ , and I don't want to do that when I'm _him_ , especially after telling the kid that I wouldn't have anything to do with her. Pansy, that is. But no one will care if _Crabbe_ goes out with Pansy, will they?"

Crabbe perked up at that. Or it might have been Goyle. One of them said, "I can go out with Pansy?" while smiling uncertainly. Draco grabbed the front of his robes.

"You absolutely _cannot_ go out with her. _I_ go out with her. See you tossers later."

But Draco was wrong: Crabbe could _not_ go out with Pansy. Nor could anyone with Crabbe's face. Someone _did_ care whether Vincent Crabbe went out with Pansy Parkinson: Pansy cared. After he finally convinced her that he wasn't really Crabbe, she continued to be appalled at the idea.

"I don't know what you're playing at, Draco, but I will not be seen in public with one of your goons. I have my reputation to think of! What would people say?" And then she complained about the purebloods who had very inconsiderately either ended up in Azkaban or turned into blood traitors instead of being available to marry her, and she harangued him about not having escaped Azkaban years ago, so they could run off together. Draco didn't think it a terrible idea for him and Pansy to run away, and to hell with Blaise Zabini's plan. But whenever Draco seemed reluctant his mother would plead with him to think of _her_ and he'd relent. He didn't dare tell Pansy that he wasn't running off with her because of his _mother_. Narcissa and Pansy didn't get on; whenever Pansy stayed the night, "someone" mysteriously ordered finely diced tomatoes mixed into the fried eggs for breakfast. Pansy was terribly allergic and always had to go off to St Mungo's afterward, where they treated her quickly and turfed her out again.

After the potion had been ruined by Narcissa's hair and then Crabbe's, they'd had to go another month without proper Polyjuice that would allow him to infiltrate the Weasley home. The following month he turned into the spitting image of Zabini. Draco did _not_ like that Pansy appeared to be quite content to go out with him when he was wearing _Zabini's_ face and body. Once she'd revealed this he refused to go anywhere with her and she'd Apparated away in high dudgeon, as he'd promised her a lovely evening out. The last straw was the potion after that, when Goyle turned into an oversized _rat_ and remained like that for weeks. Zabini had accused Draco of sabotage and had even tried to get Goyle to attack him, as it was "Draco's fault" that he was a large rat.

The following month Crabbe was selected for testing and nothing happened. Draco sighed; another batch tainted with Crabbe hair. He knew better than to try to take it. Pansy wouldn't stand for _that_ again. But Zabini himself was drinking it, grinning. Draco couldn't believe it; Zabini wanted to be _Crabbe_? But nothing happened to Zabini. Draco frowned. "What's going on? Didn't you add _anyone's_ hair?"

Zabini laughed. "It wouldn't matter if I did. This isn't Polyjuice Potion. I've stopped trying to make it here. I've been tending to the cauldron at my house and I have a proper supply there in which I've put some hair we collected from Weatherby." He took a large metal flask from a leather bag. Draco nodded at Zabini, smiling slowly.

"Very clever. But doesn't it still need to be tested?"

"Already did. I had breakfast with your 'parents' this morning."

Draco stared. "Well, if you don't need me after all, perhaps I'll bugger off to Gibraltar with Pansy."

"It was just a test," Zabini said, his voice very hard. "We still have a saboteur," he added, glaring round at Crabbe, Goyle and Draco in turn. "That won't do. The holiday is coming and the perfect opportunity to carry out the plan. I believe that we know all there is to know about the spell. We can't test it on ourselves and we can't kidnap random children without the Ministry being up in arms. We need to just jump in and do it. But we can't afford traitors," he finished, eyeing each of them meaningfully again.

Crabbe and Goyle looked at Zabini guilelessly. Draco shrugged. "I have no interest in sabotage. I _don't_!" he added upon seeing Zabini's sceptical expression. "And neither does my mum, but if you doubt _her_ , well, you're so _close_ to her. _You_ work it out."

"There's a woman I suspect, but it's not your mother." Zabini continued to glare at Draco, who dropped his jaw.

" _Pansy is loyal to a fault! She would never—_ "

#/#/#

Percy backed away from the door to the dining room, smiling to himself. There was definite dissension in the ranks. Everyone suspected everyone else and no one was safe from being tainted as a traitor except for him. As long as he didn't leave the house he could freely go where he pleased. He interacted pleasantly with everyone but Draco and Pansy, who ordered him about as though he was a house-elf, in contrast to the perfectly civil interactions he'd had with from Zabini, Crabbe, Goyle and even Mrs Malfoy.

He'd worked out that Zabini had put a spell on him similar to what wizards used on elves, and this was why it didn't seem to have crossed Zabini's mind that Percy could be behind the sabotage: he thought the spell prevented it. Percy had discovered that the spell did not in fact prevent him from doing things like working on executing unspoken, wandless spells and sabotaging the Polyjuice Potion, but nonetheless he was working on a way to get around it, so far without success, because it _did_ prevent his leaving the house. He was very glad that the spell didn't make him shut his ears in the oven door or iron his hands every time he sabotaged the potion, so it evidently wasn't _precisely_ like the spell used on house elves.

He hadn't counted on Zabini working on the potion at his own house, but he knew that Zabini still didn't suspect 'Weatherby'. The one thing that made him nervous was that they were now planning to begin abducting the children. He worried about them, since he didn't think it likely that Zabini would concern himself with their well-being, but he was also excited because of one thing in particular:

 _Nate will be here._

He would finally get to see _his son_. He had a son, a fifteen-year-old son, whom he had never met, and while he didn't _want_ Nate to be in danger, their bringing the children to the Malfoy home would mean that Percy would finally get to see Nate.

Unless he didn't.

 _What if they take the kids to Zabini's house?_ he thought, panic starting to make him shake. _No, no_ , he tried to reassure himself. _They've been planning to bring them here. They're not going to change the plan now._ Percy sat at the table in the large kitchen, his head in his hands, hoping that the plan didn't change. Otherwise he didn't see how he could protect his son and the others. Ron's kids—his niece and nephews! He'd heard Draco complaining about them as well. Harry and Ginny's daughters, Harry's son Teddy. And Nate. Nate Clearwater, _his_ _son_.

Percy opened the table's drawer and reached far into its depths, bringing out a length of pale wood that had once been a spoon but was now a double for Pansy's wand. He needed only the opportunity to do a simple swap. He'd thought of trying to get Crabbe's or Goyle's wands, in that they were both inattentive enough to make it easy, but he was unconvinced that he could duplicate the appearance of either one, since they were both rather stubby and thick. Pansy's had the right look and she didn't seem to use it often, relying as she did upon the Floo Network to travel between her house and the Malfoys' and upon Percy to fetch her anything she needed when she stayed at the Malfoys'. He caressed the length of wood delicately before returning it to its hiding place. _Soon. Very soon._ He felt almost as though he'd been anticipating the kidnaping as much as the co-conspirators, though for utterly different reasons.

 _I'll finally get to see my son._

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	41. The Memory

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Forty-One**

 **The Memory**

 **#/#/#**

"So, what's the plan?" Teddy wanted to know.

"Plan?" Harry said absently, not looking up from the essays he was marking. Teddy sighed; Ginny sat in a chair on the opposite side of the desk from Harry, marking exams. Teddy noticed that the case with the sword was missing from the corner of the office.

"The Easter hols. You were going to talk to my mum, work out a plan. Where I'm to be when during the holiday. Which starts in two days." Harry lifted his head, hardly daring to believe that the young man standing before him, a month short of his fifteenth birthday, _was_ actually his son. _I'd already been in the Triwizard Tournament when I was fifteen_ , he thought for a moment. _I hope he never has to go through anything remotely like what I went through._

"Do you need to know now for a reason?" Ginny asked gently. "I mean, if you've got plans to see your friends I'm certain we can work around your schedule."

Teddy smiled at her. There were still times when he regretted learning that Harry was his father, but not a day had passed when he wasn't enormously grateful that, of all the women in the world, Ginny was his stepmother. Most adults wouldn't do the logical thing—the thing Ginny was suggesting—simply on principle. Not because it was against adults' principles to be logical, though Teddy wasn't always so certain about that, but because one didn't let the _children_ dictate what was going to happen, and when.

"Well, Donna's invited Nate and me and Enika to visit her and see her sister in a play. She's supposed to be good. Donna's very excited for her. That's just one day, though."

"Sounds lovely!" Ginny said, smiling. "Perhaps we could also go. Unless this is something the four of you were hoping to do on your own," she added hastily, seeing Teddy's expression. Enika Fujita had been his girlfriend for a couple of months and during that time there had only been one Hogsmeade weekend. They often held hands while walking through the corridors. Ginny had wondered whether Donna and her nephew were also a couple but had no idea how to ask without seeming too nosy. "We don't need to monopolise your time. We see you quite often here at school, you and Nate also get to see Rory, Ruby and your cousin Marguerite more often now that they're first-years, and your mum and Severus get to spend time with you as well. It's just Penelope and Julian who don't see Nate often. Perhaps it would be best if we work around their schedule. I'm sure Severus has made arrangements to see Julian."

"Erm, well," Teddy hesitated, "if that would be all right."

Harry was again staring adamantly at the essays he was marking. "If it's all right with your mother," he said vaguely.

"And Nate's mother," Ginny added.

"And Nate's father," Teddy said with a sigh.

Ginny frowned. "I'm not sure it really matters what he thinks. Percy seems terribly— _uninvolved_ ," Ginny said with a sigh, staring unseeingly at the parchments before her. "Mum says they've hardly seen him for the past _five or six months_. He's sent _owls_ often enough, telling them what he's up to, but in some ways he might as well be in Gibraltar still. Won't even eat breakfast with Mum and Dad anymore."

Harry froze for a moment. "What did you say?"

Ginny frowned. "I said that he won't even eat breakfast with Mum and Dad—"

"Not that. The only contact anyone's had with Percy for _months_ has been by owl?"

Ginny shook her head. "You _know_ this, Harry."

Harry swallowed. "Yeah. I just never—never thought about how similar it was to—"

"What are you talking about?" Ginny looked sideways at Teddy.

Harry glanced at him as well. "Erm, maybe we should talk about this later."

Teddy grimaced. "I can take a hint. Okay. I'm going."

As he stormed out of the room, Ginny called after him, "Teddy! It's not that—"

He was already gone. Ginny closed the office door after watching him walk away. She turned and leaned on the closed door, examining Harry. "Was that really necessary?"

He gazed at her innocently. "What? Do you want him telling Nate?"

"Telling Nate what?"

Harry pushed his chair away from his desk, his brows knit. "That's what I don't know. When's the last time someone actually saw Percy?"

Ginny laughed. "Harry, you're as bad as old Moody, seeing conspiracies everywhere."

"I'm—I'm worried about Percy. Think of the old Death Eaters who may want to get revenge on Dumbledore's spies. Maybe he was better off as a Muggle in Gibraltar."

Ginny walked around the desk and peered in Harry's face; he seemed lost in thought. "Are you saying that you think it's someone other than Percy sending the owls? Plus, Mum and Dad have sent owls back to him, and they've been finding him, because his replies have acknowledged what's in Mum and Dad's letters."

Harry shrugged. "I don't know _what_ I think. But isn't it a bit strange that none of us have seen him for _months_? Including his son?"

Ginny sat on the desk, her hand on her chest. "What if someone has turned back the clock and made him forget the things he's managed to remember since coming back? What if—?"

Harry patted her hand but didn't know how to be reassuring about this. He didn't know anything for certain. "We'll find out what's going on. And if he's lost more memories. Ron told Percy he should see Parvati."

Ginny crossed her arms and gave him a meaningful look. "He's not the only one."

Harry rolled his eyes and stood, walking to the casement window, where he could see the Hufflepuff team practicing on the Quidditch pitch. "Don't start again, please."

"You've said it yourself, Harry!" she insisted. "You have as much a right to know as—"

He whirled on her. "No, I don't, Ginny. I just _don't_."

"Why?"

He breathed out through his nose. "How would you feel if you found out that Tom Riddle had told Theo all of the secrets you confided in Riddle when you were eleven?"

She bit her lip. "I—I've just assumed that he did, actually," she said, her voice shaking.

"Yeah, but what if you _knew_ for certain?"

"Harry, what does this have to do with—"

"He violated her, like he violated you!" he cried. "And when it comes to both of you it was _my fault_! I _don't_ have the right to pry into exactly what—"

Ginny stared at him. "Harry! First, it's _not_ the same thing. If anything, well, think about it. It _could_ have been far worse for me, and it was bad enough. But Tilda—considering how much worse it was, and the way he used you, don't you think you have an _obligation_ to know? He violated you, too, Harry, to use you the way he did."

Harry turned to the window again. The Hufflepuff Seeker had just caught the Snitch and her teammates were congratulating her. "That's what Ron says. And Hermione."

She snorted. "What do we have to do, get everyone you know to give you the same advice before you follow it? Harry, promise me that during the holiday you'll _go to Parvati_. Honestly! You've known about Teddy long enough without getting to the bottom of how he exists at all."

Harry sighed, leaning on the window sill. "I just don't like to think about being his _tool_ , his weapon."

Ginny put her arms around his waist and rested her cheek on his back. "No one does, Harry. I suspect that Sirius felt he _had_ to go to the Ministry because he found out that your attachment to him had been used to lure _you_ there. But it sounds almost as though you're still trying to distract yourself from the issue by bringing up things like Percy. He's behaving like a prat again? What else is new? Stop making excuses."

He grimaced. He couldn't put it off any longer. But as he turned and took her in his arms, resting his chin on her ducked head, he thought, _Percy wasn't being a prat—he was working as a spy. We should have realised that something was off. And we should sit up and notice that something is off now._

"Okay. I'll see Parvati. I'll send Percy an owl, see if he wants to go with me, yeah?"

Ginny nodded, smiling with satisfaction. "And I'm sure we'll all feel rather stupid about worrying about him when he shows up at Parvati's. He's probably just been busy with his job—you know him. An importer-exporter must keep him quite busy."

#/#/#

Harry couldn't decide what to do with his hands. He was glad that he hadn't convinced Percy to come with him to see Parvati. A return owl had arrived at Hogwarts before he and Ginny had packed up the kids and returned to St Clare's for the Easter holiday. Ginny was disappointed by Percy but glad that Harry was taking steps to learn what had happened on his sixteenth birthday. He was doing the mature thing, putting aside his fears and confronting the past. _So why do I feel like running away?_

Parvati was talking to a customer about crystal balls. Harry was tempted to tell the witch, "A crystal ball is good for using as a magnifying glass, an attractive paper-weight, or a mirror, in a pinch." As far as he was concerned he'd never seen anything of note in one and still laughed when he thought of Ron's Divination OWL.

He glanced around the room into which Parvati had ushered him, the beaded curtain still clattering from her passage back to the front of the shop. It smelled better than Trelawney's stuffy tower classroom, but there were no visible windows. The only light came from flickering lamps set about the room on the mantel and rickety bookcases, which were full of books on Divination. Paisley shawls and elaborately embroidered saris were draped from the ceiling and walls and incense wafted from somewhere. He felt something brush his leg and leaned down to glance under the round table's floor-length tablecloth. A large grey cat glared at him balefully. Tarot cards, a crystal ball, and a tea tray sat on the table.

Conversation between Parvati and the indecisive witch continued. Harry grew restless, wandering in a circle, lifting the draperies adorning the walls and finding a dirty window looking onto a brick wall, a blank wall with damaged plaster, and a door with the legend "Office" in simple black block letters. He let the drapery fall again and was about to sit when he finally heard the bell on the shop door. A few seconds later Parvati walked through the beaded curtain, smiling apologetically.

"Sorry, Harry. I've locked up and we shouldn't be disturbed."

"Do you not usually do readings during shop hours?" he asked, sitting again.

"I have a few special clients who pay me well to close up the shop when they come see me, but I purposefully have limited shop hours because this is how I really make my living, for the most part," she said, looking somewhat abashed.

Harry felt a bit embarrassed to even be in her shop, as though it implied that he believed in Divination, which, in spite of the prophecy that had caused Voldemort to attempt to kill him, he did not. He remembered Dumbledore telling him that the prophecy was _only_ important because Voldemort chose to make it so. It was not inevitable that it should shape both of their lives. Voldemort made a choice and that was what had set the events in motion that took Harry's parents from him. _Nothing is carved in stone except for the past_ , he thought. _We can choose any future we like._

"I know you think this is rubbish," Parvati said, waving her hand at the books on Divination, the crystal ball and the tea. "Once I would have argued with you. But—" She faltered, sitting wearily in the other chair with a dispirited sigh. "I've been trying for over ten years to have even one moment when I truly have the Sight—and nothing. I can follow formulas to do Tarot readings, and I can stare at tea leaves and say what they look like and what that means, and I can make star charts, but—"

She faltered again, drumming her fingers on the table before summarily scooping up the Tarot cards. "You know what that was, Harry? It was a reading for a wizard who comes every week, to decide what to do in his life. And what do the cards tell me every week? That his wife is cheating on him, very likely. For ages now. And I haven't the heart to tell him, mostly because I don't know whether it's really true. What if he kills her? Or himself? What if he gets depressed and can't work anymore?" She laid the cards out in an arc by sweeping her hand across the tablecloth, so that only the rainbow pattern on the backs of the cards could be seen. She plucked a card from the middle of the arc and turned it over; it showed a young man who appeared to be choosing between two women, one older, like a mother, and one younger, a maiden who seemed like the young man's logical counterpart. A Roman numeral six was at the top of the card.

"Maybe I'm not cut out for this part of it, you know, Harry? I don't even know whether I should help you get your memory back. What if you don't really want to know what happened to you when you were younger any more than that wizard probably wants to know about his wife?" She gazed at him with large apprehensive eyes.

"Please, Parvati. It's been a long time. I think I can handle it. I won't blame you no matter how bad it is. I don't believe in killing the messenger," he added, smiling at her in what he hoped was a reassuring way, though he was more than a little nervous himself. "What do we have to do?"

She frowned. "You said you suspected that You-Know-Who possessed you and that while you were possessed you were given an order to put a memory charm on yourself. Are you sure you didn't just forget what happened _because_ you were possessed? Ginny told me that she didn't remember what happened to her when she was possessed."

Harry sat up, feeling hopeful. "You know, you've got a good point. Would that be easier, to recover memories of something I did while possessed?"

Parvati frowned again. "Unfortunately, no. Those memories were never in your mind to begin with, so there's nothing to recover. That's the bad news. The good news is that we can discover _whether_ there was a memory charm put on you at all, because if that's the case it _can_ be removed. Having that memory is your natural state. Magic that changes something from its natural state is much harder. _Returning_ you to your natural state, to wholeness, is much easier because nature wants you to be that way. And since you were the person most likely to have performed the charm we know the wand and the person who did it. It's best if a memory charm is removed by the person who cast the spell, using the original wand. You do have the same wand?" Harry nodded. Parvati looked grim. "All right. Close your eyes. I'm going to cast a spell that will allow me to see whether there are any areas of your mind that are masked by a memory charm. Try to relax and empty your mind of distractions."

"Distractions? Like not knowing what happened to me?" he whinged, stopping as soon as he saw the expression on her face. "Sorry. Okay, okay. I'll try." He closed his eyes and tried not to think but he wasn't certain whether he succeeded. He was vaguely aware of Parvati moving around him, but he couldn't make out the incantation she whispered. Then he felt the hair on his head stand as though he'd put his finger into an electrical socket. He swallowed and tried to blank his mind, but it was difficult. He felt like he'd been holding his breath when he heard Parvati sit again.

"You can open your eyes, Harry."

His eyes sought her face and he was glad to see that she was smiling. "Well, it's official. You have had a memory charm put on you, so we can remove it. Or rather, _you_ can remove it. It's actually a little like putting memories into a Pensieve. You cast a spell that's similar to the Pensieve spell, but you remove the specific memory that has been unreachable, put it into the Pensieve, and then once you are able to examine it objectively from that viewpoint, the memory becomes part of your conscious mind again. Understand?"

"I think so. You have a Pensieve?"

She nodded, standing and going to a large cabinet in the corner. "It's very useful in my work. Sometimes I need to see something one of my clients has experienced first-hand before I can understand how to read the cards or tea-leaves. I know Sybill never resorted to this, but I find it enormously useful, since I don't have the Sight."

Harry frowned. "Stop doing that. Isn't it better to _know_ you don't have the Sight than to think that you do? You're still helping people."

She brought the large stone bowl to the table and set it down with a _thunk_. "I suppose. What a lot of people want to do is just talk about what's bothering them, about what they fear. They get things off their chest. I don't think it would really matter if I told them what was in their cards or teacups as long as I continued to listen to them. This is the first time I've done _magic_ in this room for a very long time," she admitted.

Harry put his hand over hers on the table. "And I appreciate it. I'm sure the others do, too. Maybe that's all they need: an ear. Not a miracle."

Parvati gave him a rueful smile. "I know. Which is why I don't mind _too_ much that I don't have the Sight." She moved the Pensieve a little closer to him. "Okay, now let's practice the incantation: _Quidquid latet apparebit. Recordare ilia die._ "

Harry cleared his throat and repeated the unfamiliar words. Parvati asked him to do it five times before she was satisfied. "Good! Now, when you're doing this, you must put your wand against your temple, think very clearly of what happened just before you can't remember any more, then say the incantation while slowly drawing your wand away." Harry nodded, his stomach doing flips inside him as he realised that he was _finally_ going to learn what had happened on his sixteenth birthday.

"Will I just suddenly remember what happened?"

"Not until you actually enter the Pensieve, to re-experience it. There are other ways to recall buried memories, but this is the best. Then you can decide whether to keep it in your mind. If you'd rather I can give you a small vial to put it in."

Harry wondered whether having it in a small glass bottle would simply tempt him to hurl the bottle into the Thames, though, and he said, "No, I think I'd better have this memory again. Really have it. There's so much that hinges on it."

Parvati nodded. "Okay, then. You've decided. Are you picturing the time just before you lost your memory? You should include that with the lost memory so it all flows together seamlessly. Just keep repeating the incantation until it works."

He swallowed and closed his eyes, remembering the morning of his sixteenth birthday…

 _He was walking up the stairs in Tilda's house. At the top of the stairs he remembered belatedly that Jack had fixed the downstairs loo. However, he was already upstairs and didn't think he could wait to go all the way back down, through the lounge and kitchen, down the corridor…_

 _He shuffled toward the bathroom. He was already here, no point to turning back. But just when he'd reached the bathroom, the bedroom door suddenly swung open. He braced himself for the moment when everything would go black._

Putting his wand to his temple, he said, " _Quidquid latet apparebit. Recordare ilia die. Quidquid latet apparebit. Recordare ilia die. Quidquid..._ "

He felt his entire body shaking, down to the smallest molecule, it seemed. Then it was as though a storm was blowing through his mind. There was a rush of whiteness and the sensation that a great hook was tugging at a part of his _brain._ He wanted to scream but his voice seemed to be gone. He could see nothing behind his eyelids but a pale stream of life, of figures moving too quickly to be identified, events passing too quickly to be understood. He tried to remember to draw his wand down to the Pensieve, to store the memory there, and was vaguely aware of Parvati's hand on his arm, guiding him.

" _Quidquid latet apparebit. Recordare ilia die. Quidquid latet apparebit. Recor—_ "

And then, abruptly, he could see the corridor outside Tilda's bedroom again. He was seeing it, he realised, from the floor, and he was vaguely aware of his tailbone aching.

With a great effort, he opened his eyes and whispered, " _Finite incantatem_." He stopped shaking. He wasn't certain how long he'd been in that state. It was as though his heart had stopped, he'd so quickly become accustomed to it. He looked at Parvati apprehensively. "Did we get it?" he whispered.

"Let's find out," she said, also whispering. They leaned over the Pensieve and Parvati stirred the whitish contents with the tip of her wand. A circular window opened up on the surface, looking into the upstairs corridor in Tilda's Little Whinging house.

"Yeah," Harry breathed. "That's Tilda's house."

Parvati peered at him, biting her lip a little. "Are you sure you want to go in alone? Or today? Perhaps this is enough for today. I can set this aside for you."

Harry cleared his throat. "I've waited long enough. I'll go in." He stood up and took a deep breath, prodding the Pensieve contents with his wand while Parvati took a step back from the table. He bent over and felt his nose touch the surface, as it had so long ago when he was snooping into Dumbledore's Pensieve, and then Snape's. As he had then, he felt the flipping, tumbling sensation as his body was drawn into the Pensieve. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again he was in Tilda's house, standing behind his sixteen-year-old self, who was _approaching_ the door to the bathroom, plodding along sleepily.

His younger self got farther along the corridor than he remembered. His hand was on the doorknob and he was about to enter the bathroom when the bedroom door flew open. This time, instead of everything going black, Harry saw the person in the doorway. It seemed that he could feel every cell in his body shaking as he stared. _Can't be… Impossible…_

" _No!_ " he cried, closing his eyes and leaping upward, tumbling in the air and onto the floor beside the small, round table, almost landing on Parvati. She crouched on the floor beside him. He remembered Tilda crouching beside him, then standing too quickly, lying about not knowing what had happened, _lying_ to him, asking him whether it was his scar, telling him he was just sleepy. _I'm not sleepy now_. He didn't want to believe it. Yet he finally understood so much.

Harry looked at Parvati, who seemed to think she had killed him. "I'm okay. Help me up?" She did and they both sat again, the Pensieve between them. It took all the self-control Harry could muster not to fling it across the room. But he didn't want Parvati to think he blamed her. He was the one who couldn't handle the truth. She had warned him that this might be difficult.

"Harry?" she whispered. He gazed at her, unseeing. Instead he saw Ginny's face as he wondered how on earth he could ever tell _her_ the truth. _This will kill her._

"What was it?" Parvati asked, breathless.

"Someone else was there," he said softly, turning away from her as though she really was Ginny. He couldn't face Ginny, Parvati or any woman. Not after what he'd done. Even though he hadn't actually done it. Yet.

" _Someone else_? You-Know-Who didn't possess you? Someone else was in the house? Did this person put Imperius on you? And _make_ you—erm—" She bit her lip.

"Make me sleep with her? Or worse—make me rape her? I don't think so. I can usually overcome Imperius, for one thing. And for another, I'm as certain as I can be that he was the one who slept with her. He was in the bedroom doorway wearing nothing but boxers. When Tilda was checking on me I think she was only wearing her dressing gown. She kept holding the neck closed."

Parvati gasped. "So—you don't think you're Teddy's father?"

Harry prodded the contents of the Pensieve idly with his wand, gazing into its depths, seeing the familiar figure in the doorway. "No. I'm Teddy's dad, all right."

She frowned, leaning over the Pensieve, her jaw dropping when she saw the same figure. "But—but— _how_?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" Something caught his eye on a shelf behind Parvati's head: a large hour-glass filled with shining silver sand. Immediately, he knew what he should do. "Fortunately, one of my best friends happens to have experience with this."

"Who? Ron Weasley? Experience with—what exactly?"

But Harry had already Disapparated. Parvati made a sceptical noise and pointed her wand at the teapot, causing it to start steaming immediately. "Experience with cheating on his wife?" she mumbled to herself as she spooned tea leaves into the pot. She had been nervous about doing this but now she felt even worse, as Ginny had become a friend to her. _Am I helping Harry to cheat on Ginny?_ she wondered, her heart beating very fast as she contemplated the Pensieve, willing herself _not_ to peer over the rim and into its depths, since Harry had not invited her to do so.

"What good will talking to Ron do you?" she asked the Pensieve, for lack of anyone else to talk to. The only outcomes she could imagine would be Ron trying to kill Harry for cheating on Ginny or Ron siding with Harry, telling him he'd done nothing wrong, as many men _would_ do. Parvati sighed noisily as she poured hot tea into her cup.

" _Men._ "

#/#/#

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	42. Time-Turned

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 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Forty-Two**

 **Time-Turned**

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"Hermione! You've got to help me!" Harry said urgently as soon as his vision cleared and he could see her sitting at the desk in her small office. Her daughter slept in a cot in the corner and Hermione didn't seem at all surprised that one of her best friends had just Apparated into her Ministry office. She continued to read a parchment.

"Have a seat, Harry. I'll be with you in a minute. You know, it's rather rude to Apparate into someone's office. You didn't go past security, for one thing. In future the least you can do is arrive in the corridor and knock first." She kept her eyes to the parchment so firmly that Harry wondered how she knew it was him. Then he remembered that he'd shouted at her, which he reckoned was also rude. He felt nettled and guilty simultaneously. He knew it was selfish of him to assume that she would be available to help at a moment's notice, yet this was _important_. He didn't want help with schoolwork—his _life_ was falling apart.

"It's probably not a good idea not to look at visitors to your office," he commented in what he hoped was a casual voice. He felt irked at the guilty feeling that had come over him. They weren't in school anymore and she had other concerns, a job, a husband and a child. _Yes, I'm a cad. Typical male, taking advantage of the women in my life._ Yet he couldn't contain his impatience. After what seemed an eternity, she was _still_ staring at the parchment. Harry couldn't take it any longer. "Hermione, I need to know: have they made any more Time-Turners? The Ministry? Erm, the Unspeakables, I mean."

She jerked her head up and narrowed her eyes. "Why on earth are you asking me that? You know they were all destroyed when—"

"—when we wrecked the Department of Mysteries, I know, I know. But that was sixteen years ago! Are you telling me that nothing's been done to repair the damage we did?"

Hermione fixed him with a knowing eye. "What is this about, Harry? You know very well that I'm not an Unspeakable. I have no idea what the employees in the Department of Mysteries get up to. And if you want me to sneak in there and find out, the answer is _no_. As it is, I'm lucky I was hired at all, considering that I participated in a _raid_ on the Ministry in my fifth year. Of course, no one else _wants_ this job, so—"

"Hermione! We were fighting Death Eaters! We didn't raid the—"

"Yes, well, you don't know how many times I've been accosted on the lifts by these old codgers who've been around here forever. They _smirk_ and say, 'Ah, you're that young firebrand who came in here to do battle in the Department of Mysteries and who's always going on about treating _elves_ like wizards,' as though both are the most idiotic things they've ever heard. They might as well be patting me on the _head_ for all the respect I get." She put down the parchment, frowning.

"I'm sorry, Hermione," he said, meaning it. He sat in one of the chairs facing her desk and let out a great sigh. "I don't know whether it's any comfort, but I respect you. I always have done. And I'm sorry that I'm here asking you for help."

She looked up at him. "Oh, no, Harry, don't be! I'm feeling rather out of sorts today. I just discovered that one of those Ministry officials who are always verbally patting me on the head has been keeping his elf in tablecloths and making her beat herself up every time she makes his tea too strong or starches his underwear."

Harry snorted. "Maybe the starch was supposed to send a message?" he suggested, glad that she was finally cracking a smile.

"Yes," she confirmed, laughing. "I think it was. Stupid old sod! I hope it _hurt_ ," she added, an edge to her voice. Frances started moving around in her cot, making wakeful noises, and Hermione went to her, picking her up and holding her closely. Peering over the top of the baby's head, she said, "Harry—why are you asking me about Time-Turners? Surely you should have learned from my experience in third year that they're a dreadful idea."

She sat with the baby on her lap and Harry stared at his hands. "It's not that I want to use one. It's just that I'm wondering: is it even _possible_ to use a Time-Turner now? Are there any left? Have any new ones been created?"

Hermione frowned again. "I don't know, but I would guess the answer is that there's no longer such a thing as a Time-Turner."

Harry ran his hand through his hair and paced before her desk. "Then how else can someone travel back through time? You talked about time-traveling wizards not being careful. How did they do it? Did they all use Time-Turners? Is there another way?"

Hermione frowned. "I don't think so, Harry. As far as I know, Time-Turners were the only way, and now they're all gone. Just as well, if you ask me. It's not good to be tempted to mess with time. I learned my lesson."

Harry glared at her so hard that she had to drop her eyes. "How can you say that when we couldn't have saved Sirius without your Time-Turner? And Buckbeak?"

She bit her lip. "I'm sorry, Harry, but don't you feel like, well, like we were trying to cheat fate when we did that? Did it really work out in the end? Temporarily, yeah, but—"

"Hermione, I need to know how to travel back in time about sixteen years without a Time-Turner!" he interrupted her. He didn't want to listen to a lecture from her about cheating fate. He wondered sometimes whether he'd spent the last thirty years cheating fate, ever since he'd survived the Killing Curse. It didn't bear thinking about.

She stared at him. "Are you mad? Even _with_ a Time-Turner it isn't practical to go back that far. Do you know how many times you'd need to flip it to go back even _one_ year? Think, Harry: one flip for one hour, twenty-four hours in a day, three-hundred sixty-five days in a year. That's—eight-thousand seven-hundred sixty times!" she calculated quickly, waving her wand over a piece of parchment. "And to do _that_ sixteen times would mean—"

"I get it, I get it," he said quickly.

She grimaced. "Why would you want to do that anyway, Harry? Sixteen years ago you were—"

"Nearly sixteen. Still in fifth year."

She dropped her jaw. " _No_ , Harry. Absolutely not! I will _not_ help you to save Sirius, as much as I cared about him. He's gone and you just have to accept it!" she said with a desperate note in her voice. He could see tears in her eyes.

He swallowed, not wanting to admit the real reason for his inquiry. He nodded and sat, staring at the floor. "You're right, of course, Hermione. He's gone…"

"Oh, Harry," she said helplessly, "it's just hit you again, hasn't it? They say that can happen. Sixteen years…"

Still not meeting her eyes, he stood. "Well, I'm just lucky I have you to talk sense into me, Hermione. And as you said, even with a Time-Turner it would be impossible anyway."

She forced a laugh. "It'd be barking mad," she confirmed, making him frown for a moment; she didn't sound entirely like herself. That was something Ron usually said.

"Seen Ron lately?" he said suddenly.

She hesitated before answering. "Erm, no. Not for a long time, actually. I rather miss him. He's—avoiding me, I think. What made you ask that?"

He examined her face, since he had nothing to hide. But she did have something to hide; she didn't meet his eyes as she returned the sleepy Frances to her cot, and then she was rearranging the items on her desk in a show of being busy.

"Just—he always says that—'barking mad'—and you _never_ do. I wondered if you'd seen him and he was sort of rubbing off on you."

She was pushing the parchments around on her desk in true desperation now. "No, no, erm, rubbing off. Although maybe I was just—thinking about him. Because you came to see me. And—so I started talking like him. Stupid, really."

Harry nodded, unconvinced. She was being very weird about Ron. "That makes sense," he lied. "Well, thanks for your help. For talking sense into me. If there are no more Time-Turners then I reckon I'm safe from myself, you know? It was good to see you."

She stood and walked around the desk, hugging him quickly and giving him a peck on the cheek. Her own cheeks had been rather flushed ever since the subject of Ron had come up. "It was good to see you, too. I'm—I'm sorry about Sirius, you do know that? I always have been. I wish we'd known that he wasn't actually at the Ministry."

Harry patted her arm. "Don't think about it, Hermione. It's a long time ago."

She shook her head. "Not long enough. That's why it's still fresh in your mind."

He grimaced, feeling guilty both for misleading her and for not thinking about Sirius very often. "I reckon," he said vaguely. "I should go. I'll tell Ginny you said hello."

"Yes, and we'll see you on Easter! My mum and dad are off visiting my aunt in Barbados so Molly invited us to dinner, along with Neville's gran. It would be so small and lonely for the three of us to go see just her. She misses Algie and Enid so much."

"Right. See you Sunday," he said, nodding, before Disapparating. He concentrated hard on returning properly to Parvati's shop instead of thinking of the clash of wills that would occur by putting Augusta Longbottom in the same house with Molly. He hoped Fleur and Bill would be coming as well. Fleur could put them _both_ in their places.

After telling Parvati that it was official, he _couldn't_ travel back through time sixteen years—or even sixteen hours—without a Time-Turner, he actually felt quite light-hearted and decided to leave the memory he'd retrieved with her. He didn't want to see it and remember it. There was really no point. It was an impossibility. It wasn't going to happen. He Apparated back to the graveyard surrounding St Clare's Chapel and strode jauntily to the house, whistling. _It's okay,_ he thought. _I'm not going to travel back in time and cheat on Ginny with Tilda. There's nothing to worry about_.

He thought this just as he reached out to grasp the doorknob and let himself into his house. Instead of feeling solid bronze his hand went right _through_ the knob. He stumbled forward in surprise, expecting to knock his head painfully against the door but instead falling _through_ it. He glanced around the messy vestibule, confused. Standing before him, as solid-looking as Harry thought _he_ ought to have been, was the living, breathing figure of Mad-Eye Moody, glaring at him. Harry lifted his hand, staring at it. He could see through to the stone flags on the floor and he stared at Moody again, hoping that this time he'd see through the Auror, as he'd done for nearly sixteen years, but he did not.

Moody's magical eye rotated around, his gaze evidently penetrating the ceiling. Harry heard one of the twins scream and he felt a panic seize him. "So, Potter," Moody said, as though a chilling scream hadn't just rung through the house and it was perfectly normal that he should be a solid, living person and Harry a ghost. "Did you work it out yet?"

"What?" Harry said, incredulous at how cold-blooded he could be. _But I'm the one who's cold-blooded, aren't I? Or no-blooded, rather. Bloody hell._ "I—I don't—"

"Blame yourself? Well, I'm not saying there isn't blame to be had. Accepting blame when it's due is a good habit to get into. But now you need to stop feeling guilty and tell yourself that you'll find a way."

"I'll find a way?" The shrill scream came again.

"Aye. You may not want to, but you will. Say it. Or at least _think_ it."

It took Harry a second to realise what he was supposed to say. "I'll find a way to time-travel," he whispered, the meaning of what Mad-Eye had said suddenly dawning on him.

Immediately, he could see through Mad-Eye, as usual, and his own body was reassuringly solid and opaque once more. However, all was not well in the bedroom above him. The shrill cry went up an octave and Harry sprinted for the stairs.

#/#/#

Ron followed Harry to the kitchen. St Clare's was very quiet, especially compared to the Easter Day mayhem of The Burrow, with twelve kids from toddlers to teens years in attendance. They'd been talking in Ron's old room while Ginny, Luna and the kids were downstairs with Molly and Arthur, but when Harry suggested they come to St Clare's, Ron had agreed, suggesting that they could get both peace and Butterbeer.

"What's up?" Ron wanted to know as he sat at the table.

Harry shook his head, went to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of Butterbeer. "I didn't want someone to hear us talking. Not sure why I went, anyway. Ginny gave me the chance to stay here. Loads of other people are there, so she won't miss me."

"Of course she'll miss you," Ron countered, frowning at Harry's morose tone of voice. Harry's demeanour was decidedly odd. If he'd been about to conduct an interview, Ron would have been prepared to swear that he'd be getting a confessional. Harry seemed like a man with nothing to lose. Or everything to lose.

"Don't bet on it. She's not very happy with me just now. Ron, I don't know how to tell you this," Harry choked out. "But—but I'm going to cheat on Ginny."

Ron stared at him in disbelief. "Wh—what? What are you talking about? Do you want me to tell you not to?" His face hardened. "I can _beat_ the urge out of you, if you like. Just say the word. Or hex you out of it. Your choice."

Harry sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. "Ginny knows."

Ron leaned on the table, his hands flat on the wooden surface. "Well, no wonder she's not happy with you! _Ginny knows_?" he shouted not six inches from Harry's face, though Harry was partly protected from Ron's saliva by his hands covering his head.

Frowning at his best friend and brother-in-law, Harry said quietly, "My hands are all wet, Ron."

Ron started pacing. "Oh, yeah, you're telling me that you're going to cheat on my sister and that she _knows_ , and the big problem is that I _spit_ when I talk?"

"I was just saying," Harry replied in a dreary voice, as though he'd lost the will to live. His head was in his hands again. Ron stared at the top of his head, frowning.

"For someone who's going to cheat on your wife you don't sound very happy about it. Couldn't you at least have chosen an _attractive_ mistress?" he drawled, trying to suppress the urge to throttle Harry by falling back on sarcasm.

Harry furrowed his brow in disbelief. "Why should I be _happy_ about it? I don't _want_ to cheat on Ginny. Ever since I found out I've been miserable."

Ron sat on the opposite side of the table from Harry and opened his Butterbeer. Harry's was still untouched. "I must be missing something. What do you mean 'found out'? You're acting like it's something you have no control over."

Harry uncovered his face again and sighed, looking Ron in the eye. "Well, I do, technically, but in a way _not_ doing it would be worse than _doing_ it."

Ron furrowed his brow. "Brilliant. Could you be a little _less_ clear, Harry? I wasn't confused enough." It was increasingly difficult for Ron to rein in the sarcasm.

Harry swallowed. "It's Tilda. I'm going to cheat on Ginny with Tilda. And if I don't—who knows what will happen?"

Ron was stunned for a moment but then decided that Harry couldn't be serious. He snorted. "Yeah, right. You think Snape is going to let you sleep with his _wife_? Did someone Confund you? Did you dare the twins to do something? Ours, not yours. Fred and George. Because I know from experience that you do _not_ dare them, _ever_."

"I went to see Parvati. I know what I'd been memory-charmed to forget now. On my sixteenth birthday I was in Tilda's bedroom. _This_ me—an adult me. I put the memory charm on my sixteen-year-old self so I'd forget seeing the adult me. It's going to be soon. In the Pensieve I looked about how I am now. What am I going to do?"

Ron sighed. He'd never intended to tell Harry, but this was a dire situation. He was going to cheat on Ginny if he didn't do something. The truth seemed as good a weapon as any. "Harry, I know what you're going through. I never thought I'd cheat on Luna, but—"

"You cheated on Luna?" Harry gasped.

"Ssshh!" Ron moved his eyes around the room nervously, as though someone could overhear. "Yes and no."

"Yes and no? Ron, you either cheated or you didn't."

"Well, it's a long story…"

 _Ron knocked on Hermione's office door. When there was no response he tried the knob. With the door open a crack he could see her sitting at her desk, staring at the blotter. She hadn't noticed him knocking or entering. "Hermione?" he said uncertainly, wondering whether someone had died._

" _Hm? Oh, Ron," she finally said, shaking her head as though awaking from a trance. Her eyes focussed at last. "What are you doing here?"_

" _An interview. I thought I'd see if you want to have lunch. Do you ever leave the office? Can't you get them to give you a window? It's a tomb down here."_

 _She shrugged. "Not hungry." Her skin was sallow, contrasting with the dark circles under her eyes._

 _Ron sat on her desk after pushing a pile of parchments to one side. He knew she was very glum because she didn't complain about this. "What happened? Someone abusing his elf? Or is it an elf who doesn't want help, who likes the old ways?"_

 _She swallowed and shook her head. "It's not work. Well, in a way it is…"_

 _She was going to make this difficult, he could tell. Getting information out of her had always been like pulling teeth. "I've got time. When I get back I'll only be put to work, either writing a story or taking care of the kids. While I'm here I'm off the hook."_

 _She frowned. "Off the hook? But you've got—obligations. You're never really 'off the hook', are you? Do you want to be?"_

" _I didn't mean—Hermione, this isn't about me. What's going on?"_

 _She sighed and stood, walking round the desk. "The usual. Still not pregnant. And I'm, erm, fertile again, but I feel like, if we tried again, we'd only be disappointed again."_

 _Ron tried not to laugh, she seemed so distraught. "I can guarantee that if you don't try you won't get pregnant. I don't really want to think about Neville shagging anyone, though." He forced a laugh but tears were rolling down her cheeks. He didn't know where to turn. He felt there had to be a graceful way to escape if he could only think of it._

" _Oh, Ron!" she cried, throwing her arms around him and sobbing. He patted her back awkwardly, reminded uncomfortably of third year. He'd had no idea what to do then with a girl in his arms—especially Hermione—but he felt no more comfortable about this now that she was married to Neville and he was married to Luna. If anything, he was less comfortable. What if someone found them together and got the wrong idea?_

 _Ron surreptitiously reached for his wand and put a locking charm on the door before enfolding her in his arms to comfort her. He felt he could be more helpful if he wasn't jumpy and worried about being discovered. Rita Skeeter would love to drag his name through the mud. If it involved dragging Hermione's through it at the same time that would be a fringe benefit. She took every opportunity to bash Hermione and the job she was doing and if she could throw a sex scandal into the mix she'd be ecstatic._

 _After crying into his chest Hermione lifted her head to gaze at him with shining eyes. "Thank you, Ron," she whispered, her hand on his cheek. It was rough with stubble because he'd rushed out without shaving. An alarm should have gone off in his head when he saw the way she was gazing at him, but he'd never assumed that women were interested in him, so Hermione wanting more than friendly comfort didn't cross his mind. Others misconstruing what they were doing had crossed his mind, because he knew how people's minds worked, which usually served him well as a reporter, but he'd been shocked the first time Luna had flirted with him on the train to Hogwarts, in his fifth year. He always needed to be told when a woman was chatting him up. Inside he still felt like an awkward fourteen-year-old rejected by Fleur Delacour, something he remembered rather painfully every time he saw his brother Bill and his wife._

 _He wasn't precisely certain how he came to be kissing her. He had a vague idea that she'd pulled his face down to hers after gazing into his eyes for what seemed an eternity, but it quickly turned into a mutual activity, arms snaking around each other, her mouth sliding down his throat while her fingers worked at the fastenings on his robes._

 _It wasn't as though he didn't think about her occasionally, but he always felt guilty about it. More than once he'd awoken from a vivid dream about her, turned over in bed and started caressing Luna, only to have her ask him what he'd been dreaming about. He'd been grateful for the dark bedroom when he'd lied to her and said that she'd been in his dream, so he'd wanted to make the dream reality. Luna was no fool, however. He had a feeling that she didn't believe him. The irony was that he did often dream of his wife, lovely dreams that reminded him how much he was attracted to her, but they always seemed to come when he was apart from her and couldn't take her in his arms. When he was by her side his mind mutinously conjured up images of Hermione._

 _In no time they were down to their underwear and Hermione was lying on her robe on the desk, which had been unceremoniously cleared. Ron paused before joining her on the desk, his heart pounding quickly, but then he glimpsed a wedding photo lying on the floor. He stopped, appalled at himself. In the photo Hermione and Neville were kissing. They would be kissing forever in that picture, wearing their wedding clothes, anticipating their wedding night. Or so Ron thought; Neville broke the kiss and turned to face him, raising his eyebrows at Ron's lack of clothes. Ron gasped and picked up his robes, pulling them around his waist._

" _What's wrong, Ron?"_

" _What's wrong?" he exploded. It was like a dam had burst. "What's not? We can't do this, Hermione. I can't believe we almost—"_

 _She swung her legs over the side of the desk. "What do you mean? I—I thought you wanted—"_

" _I did. I very stupidly did. Listen, we're not in school anymore and we're not just going out with Neville and Luna. We're married to them! I don't know what you're trying to accomplish, but—" Then he realised and gasped. "Hermione! You're using me!"_

 _She reddened. "I—I don't know what you're—"_

" _You do know! Neville hasn't been able to get you pregnant so you want to get a baby from me! I'm sorry, Hermione, but I don't appreciate being used as a stallion."_

 _She snorted. "Fancy yourself a stallion, do you? It's not as though you're not impressive, but really, Ron, you do think a lot of yourself, don't you?"_

 _He felt his face grow warm. "You know what I mean. You're treating me like someone who can just father a child for someone else and then walk away. And what would Neville think if the kid turned up with hair that was even a little reddish?"_

 _She shrugged. "The odds are against it, actually, with my dark hair. Luna's blond, so that wasn't fighting your red hair so much, but even you and Luna don't have four kids with bright red hair—it's a little muted, strawberry blond..."_

" _This isn't the time for a lecture about hair-colour, Hermione! You're trying to use me!"_

 _She stood and dressed, her face also red. "You didn't object a few minutes ago. I just—I don't know if I'll ever be a mother if—if we don't get some sort of help."_

 _Ron decided that he should also dress or it would be awkward with her fully clothed again and him with his robe around his waist. "The Healers and Muggle doctors have said Neville's the problem?"_

 _After they were dressed Hermione sat on her desk again so Ron sat beside her, not touching her, feeling very embarrassed by what had almost happened. And by what had actually happened, the two of them ripping off their clothes, kissing with abandon…_

" _No," she said simply. "According to them there's nothing wrong with Neville."_

 _Ron's head was swimming. "Then what good would it do for you to shag me? Are you sure? Why did you expect to get pregnant with me?"_

" _You don't understand. There's nothing wrong with me either." Ron blinked. He felt like he was missing something. Her voice had gone very soft. She stared into space as she spoke. "When I was younger I used to picture our wedding. Yours and mine. I think I was in third year when I started, but it became more detailed in fourth year. I'd picture our children—a boy and a girl. Of course, I mostly pictured killing you in fifth year. But even when I despaired of you, I never imagined having children with anyone else."_

 _She sighed deeply. "You see, I've been pregnant before. The doctors and Healers agree. I spontaneously aborted. They don't know why. I don't have anything in common with other women who spontaneously abort. They've no idea why those pregnancies didn't last." She sighed again, then used her wand to make the fallen files fly onto the desk, neatly arranging themselves. "It isn't as though I even know how we'd fit a baby into our lives. I've got a million things to do right now. There are three cases of blatant elf abuse coming before the Wizengamot next week that I'm still gathering evidence for, I'm still trying to find positions for several elves who've got the sack, Neville's in Farnham, trying to catch a wizard who's cursing antique desks and selling them to Muggles..."_

" _Neville's in Farnham? As in—living there? Not at home?"_

 _She nodded. "Yeah. So?"_

" _Hermione, what if we had—you know. Don't you think Neville would have worked out that he wasn't the father? Hair colour aside? If I didn't know better, I'd say you wanted to be caught."_

 _She stared at him, her mouth open slightly. "I—I don't know what to say, Ron," she whispered. She looked at her hands, frowning. "Did I want to be caught?"_

 _Ron felt a righteous anger move through him. "And it's not as though you gave any thought to me or to Luna, let alone your husband. Do you want a child, Hermione?" he demanded. "Sounds like you're too busy mothering all of the house elves in the British Isles! You've just replaced me and Harry with the elves. You used to mother us all the time, scheduling our every moment. Giving us shouting homework schedules for when you weren't about to shout at us! Maybe you're right: you can't fit a baby into your life. You don't want to! I shouldn't be surprised if you were doing something magical to prevent yourself from getting or staying pregnant, whether you know it or not. Perhaps before mucking about in someone else's marriage you ought to work out what you really want, including whether you want to be married to Neville and have his kid. And the next time you want a friend to get you pregnant, do me a favour and call Harry!"_

 _He stormed out of her office and the next time he heard from her she and Neville were calling together, their disembodied heads sitting in the Lovegood sitting room fire, to say that they were going to have a baby…_

#/#/#

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	43. Bad Faith

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 **Replay**

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 **Chapter Forty-Three**

 **Bad Faith**

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Harry stared at Ron, incredulous. "Wow," was all he could say at first. "That explains a lot."

Ron stared at him. "Like what?"

"Like why you avoid each other now. When I just bring up your name, Hermione won't even look at me. I think she was thinking of you, too, because she was talking like you."

"Yeah, well—" Ron grimaced before saying, "I wasn't too keen on facing Neville, either. I didn't know whether she'd told him. He didn't seem very happy with me when I saw him, but I couldn't very well _ask_ whether she'd said anything, so—avoidance."

Harry nodded. "That's what you meant when you said both yes and no to whether you'd cheated. You were naked with Hermione—"

"Not naked! Underwear!" Ron reminded him.

"—in her office," Harry finished, brushing aside Ron's protest. "By the way, remind me _never_ to go there again, yeah? The last thing I need is to picture the two of you—"

Ron snorted. "It's not as though I'm going back soon, either. But no, that's not what I meant. I meant—that time was the 'no.' There was another time."

" _What_?" Harry cried, his eyes round.

"Okay, that time could be considered a partial 'yes' and a partial 'no.' And so could the other time, in a way, because even though we really did shag we weren't married yet, though she was seeing Neville and I was seeing Luna."

Harry cleared his throat. "The last time I checked, if you were seeing other people, even though you weren't married, you cheated. Where was I? When was this?"

Ron sighed. "Do you remember the day we found Hagrid?"

Harry drew his mouth into a line. "Vividly. I'm not likely to forget..."

 _They found him at the edge of the forest, shot through with arrows that had found their mark again and again. Ron remembered the night of their Astronomy OWL, seeing Hagrid running through the castle gates carrying Fang, the Aurors' curses bouncing off him in a way that the arrows had not. They didn't know yet that they were meant to make the mistake of thinking that the centaurs had done it. Harry didn't want to leave him. Ron could tell that he needed a good cry without being seen by his best friend. Ron needed the same thing, so he volunteered to find Dumbledore and tell Hermione._

 _Dumbledore was talking to Phineas Nigellus's portrait very calmly. After Ron explained why he'd come Dumbledore leapt to his feet, telling Ron to find McGonagall. He found them together, Hermione in the armchair by the fire while McGonagall sat behind her desk. They were having tea and biscuits. He explained what had happened and McGonagall practically flew from the room. Hermione had stood to attention when he'd told them, then sank into the chair again, her face a mask of shock. He knelt before her, taking her hands, worried that this could send her into catatonia. He wasn't prepared for her eyes to suddenly wake up as she slid to the floor and threw her arms around him, sobbing into his chest. He felt his own tears start and he clutched at her for dear life._

 _After they cried for a while he became aware that they had their hands in 'inappropriate' places. They weren't supposed to touch that way anymore. And even though, most of his life, Ron was convinced that the last thing any girl wanted was to kiss him, at that moment he was certain that Hermione wanted this very much, so he pressed his lips to hers. He wasn't wrong. Hermione immediately responded, pulling him closer, her hand moving to an even more inappropriate place and Ron later wondered whether they'd have shagged on the floor of McGonagall's office if there hadn't been a knock at the door at that moment. Ron didn't know how he extricated himself, stood and answered the door. Flitwick was surprised to see them, his bushy eyebrows flying up into his hair. He was looking for McGonagall. Ron explained what had happened and the three of them ran down to Hagrid's hut together. Ron and Hermione did not meet each other's eyes._

 _The three professors levitated Hagrid together. Before they left, Fang walking morosely by Dumbledore's side, McGonagall said to Harry, Ron and Hermione, with a catch in her voice, "Can you three look after his house? Make sure there isn't still a fire burning, that sort of thing. Loose, erm, creatures."_

 _They agreed wordlessly. Ron had been able to tell, when he, Hermione and Flitwick had first arrived at the hut, that Harry had been crying, though he'd dried his eyes. Ron could feel his tears fighting to get out again as he took in the familiar, homely one-room hut, which suddenly seemed large and yawning and desolate. Pheasants and joints of mutton hung from the ceiling, the old stone sink held soiled bowls and plates, and the large wooden table was covered by an intricately-woven animal trap Hagrid had been working on. A fire still burned but they couldn't bring themselves to put it out yet. Hermione knelt on the hearth, sobs wracking her body as she stared at the flames. Ron went to her, holding her shaking body as she wept. It was so strange to be in the little house without Hagrid's massive presence overwhelming it. Ron couldn't stop his own tears. He ceased caring whether Harry saw. Harry stared at the dead birds hanging from the ceiling, his jaw clenched. Ron knew who Harry wanted to cry on, and it wasn't him or Hermione._

" _Go find Ginny," Ron said croakily, still holding Hermione tightly. Harry turned away, nodding, leaving the hut without another word. Ron checked Hermione's face; she seemed even more distraught than she was in the office._

" _Oh, Ron!" she said, her voice shaking. "I'm such a terrible, horrid person."_

 _He shook his head, tenderly brushing her hair out of her eyes. "Sssh. Of course you're not. What are you talking about?"_

" _In Arithmancy, my homework. The numbers, the signs—they all pointed to my losing someone close to me. The numbers didn't point to Harry. I thought it meant that—that—" She hiccoughed. "When you came into McGonagall's office and said it was Hagrid—I'm so dreadful! The first thing I thought was, 'Thank goodness it wasn't you!'" Her lip shook as she gazed at him; this time she was the one brushing hair out of his eyes. "I know we haven't been as close since we broke up, but the thought that I was going to lose you…really lose you…"_

 _Ron clutched at her more tightly. "You could never lose me, Hermione. That doesn't make you a horrid person, being relieved. I know you loved Hagrid."_

" _I do!" she said vehemently. "I do love Hagrid!" She continued to gaze into his eyes. Their faces were very close and the unspoken statement hung between them, as tangible as the bodies they held so tightly. The next thing Ron knew, they were kissing again._

 _Later, Ron remembered saying repeatedly, "You could never lose me, never…"_

 _Hermione seemed to be repeating, "I thought it was you, I thought it was you..."_

 _He could tell that she'd done this before. When they'd been together she'd wanted to do this when he didn't and he'd wanted to when she didn't; they always had crossed signals. Now she seemed to have all sorts of knowledge, preferences and specific tasks she wanted carried out. He ended up feeling a bit cross and ordered about. And then he realised what they'd done._

 _Luna._

 _Neville._

 _They had cheated. Ron felt ill in the pit of his stomach. This was not good. Nothing good ever came of sneaking around. They dressed without looking at each other and returned to the castle, not touching as they walked. Ron's tears were far behind him and Hermione was also dry-eyed. The next day they spoke very little to each other and avoided being alone together. She kissed Neville affectionately before they went to bed in their separate dormitories. Ron joked and laughed with Luna at the Ravenclaw table in the Great Hall, though she had an expression about her eyes that made him wonder whether she somehow simply knew._

 _They never spoke of what had occurred in the hut and Ron never told Luna that the reason he was afraid to marry her was that he worried that he would cheat on her again and hurt her unspeakably._

Harry looked uncertainly at Ron. "You—you were grieving. You weren't married—"

Ron shook his head. "So? You just said—it's still cheating. It was wrong."

Harry sighed. "You were both grief-stricken. She thought you were going to die. Hagrid _had_ just died, and you both cared about him..."

Ron glared. "Don't make excuses for us. You want me to make excuses for _you_?"

Harry froze and the silence seemed to stretch forever. At last Ron stood, running his hand through his hair. "I know you think I'm an opportunist who'll shag anything that moves—"

"I do _not_ think that, Ron!" Harry gasped.

Ron was sceptical. "I'm not proud of myself. I'm not happy with what I nearly did and what I actually did the day we found Hagrid, but just because those things happened doesn't mean I give you a pass if you cheat on my sister! That's not why I told you."

Harry shook his head. "Of course it's not. But Ron, this is different. I don't _want_ to cheat on Ginny. But, well, have you had any problems recently with—your body?"

"What are you getting at?" Ron looked like he thought Harry should be sharing Lockhart's ward at St Mungo's. Harry wasn't so sure that he shouldn't be there as well.

#/#/#

"Here's yer dinner, Jugson. Happy Easter," Fergusson snarled at the former Death Eater, shoving a plate under the bottom of the bars keeping the old man in his cell.

Azkaban wasn't exactly festive on this Easter day, but the prisoners did get a nicer meal than usual, including pudding, which was only to be had on Christmas, Easter and Hallowe'en. The delivery method did not vary from the other days of the year: teams of two Aurors were assigned to each corridor, one pushing a trolley heaped with plates of food while the other checked names off a parchment. No one was employed at the prison who was not an Auror, for maximum security, so even cleaning, cooking and tedious jobs such as food delivery were the responsibility of Aurors trained for the most extreme magical battles.

The trolleys had been charmed to keep the food warm until it was delivered, but near the end the charm always faded a bit. Sometimes prisoners with lukewarm food complained, but their complaints were usually met by, " _Be grateful you're not still in here with Dementors_." Or, if the prisoner had been arrested after Voldemort had lured the Dementors away from the prison, they might hear, " _Be glad you never had to live with the Dementors, like the old prisoners_." Sometimes inmates were complaining to the very Aurors who had arrested them. Sympathy for the prisoners was thus always in scant supply.

" _Jugson_ ," Neville Longbottom mumbled, his heart beating a little quicker as he remembered the battle at the Ministry in his fifth year. He closed his eyes for a second and collected himself before opening them and checking the name off on a curling piece of parchment. That was a long time ago, in what felt like a different life. In a way, Neville almost felt grateful to those Death Eaters, as he'd discovered what he could do in battle, even under pressure. On the other hand, " _Thanks for attacking me and torturing me and trying to kill me. I learned loads_ ," was something he couldn't imagine saying to them.

As young as he'd been during the war, he'd confronted far too many Death Eaters to be unmoved by memories of battle when walking the corridors of Azkaban. He'd avoided prison duty for years with good reason. Each night he slept in the quarters for the guards he relived those dreadful battles in his dreams. Up here, practically at the top of the world, there was no Hermione to take him in her arms, no Frances to cuddle up to his neck, with her intoxicating baby smell. Without the two people he loved best to comfort him upon waking, falling asleep again meant falling into more horrid battle nightmares. As a result, he was more than a little sleep-deprived only two days in. _After a fortnight I'll be a zombie._ Neville rubbed his eyes so hard that they _squeaked_ in their sockets.

 _I'm not supposed to be here,_ he thought crossly, following Fergusson to the next cell. He was supposed to be at the Weasleys', having a lovely home-cooked Easter dinner, rather than whatever had been provided for the Aurors unlucky enough to be doing prison duty during the holiday. But he'd asked his fellow Aurors for favours once too often, especially since Frances had been born, and had managed to avoid working at the prison for nearly four years. All good things must come to an end. Leo DuPlessy, an older Auror who'd gone to school with Neville's parents and who had substituted for him repeatedly, had called in a favour at the last minute. His daughter had had her baby earlier than expected, so he wanted to cut short his Azkaban rotation and visit her in Capetown. Neville had left for Azkaban on Friday night and wouldn't see Hermione and Frances again for a fortnight while he finished what remained of DuPlessy's month-long stint.

Rubbing his eyes again, he wondered whether he dared use a charm to try to sleep that night as Fergusson slid a plate into the next cell. "Happy Easter, Malfoy," Fergusson grunted. Neville lifted his head in surprise. He hadn't realised that Draco Malfoy was on this corridor. He hadn't seen him in years. But when the blond man who'd been curled on the pallet stood and started shuffling toward his meal, Neville gasped. _How has no one noticed this_? Neville had delivered meals in a different corridor the day before and had, mercifully, encountered no familiar names or faces.

"Wait!" he said as Fergusson started to push the trolley toward the next cell. He frowned at the parchment in his hand, looking to see whether Fergusson was confused, but according to the list this _was_ Draco Malfoy's cell.

"Come here! Please!" Neville said quickly when the man started to walk back to his bed with the food, which would not be hot for long. The blond man did not move toward the door but lifted his head and stared hopelessly at Neville. "Who are you? What is your name?" Neville demanded, his voice shaking.

The man's mouth worked soundlessly for a half-minute before he finally said, " _I heisse_ Draco Malfoy," in a mechanical voice.

"What?" Neville said, frowning. He turned to Fergusson. "Is he even speaking English?" he demanded.

Fergusson shrugged. "Dunno. He said his name, though. What's the matter with you? We're not even half done. Come on."

"No," Neville said, thrusting the parchment at Fergusson. "You'll have to finish by yourself."

"We're not supposed to do this alone! Where the hell do you think you're going?" he shouted as Neville sprinted down the corridor away from him.

"To get help!"

" _Help_? Why?"

Continuing to run, Neville shouted over his shoulder, "Because that is _not_ Draco Malfoy!"

#/#/#

Draco Malfoy was in hell. Boiling oil, burning lava, being flayed alive or eternally pushing a stone uphill would have been quite welcome compared to—

" _Uncle Percy, Uncle Percy, do it again!_ "

Draco knew he would be incredibly sore in the morning from the many small children hanging off him, riding him, and otherwise stepping on his feet, pulling his hair and ears, forcibly ripping his spectacles off his face (he wished Percy had _normal_ vision!), and, the ultimate indignity, _urinating_ on him. ( _Can't Potter's wife and that Mudblood, Granger, work out how to put a nappy on a baby so that it contains the waste?_ )

He tried not to groan as he resumed crawling about the lawn of The Burrow carrying Diana and Hal (ages three and five). He'd already given a ride to Cedric (age six), Frances (otherwise known as Leaky Nappy Number One) and Charlotte (Leaky Nappy Number Two). He was now also re-christening Diana (Female Thinks I'm a Loo) and Hal (Male Thinks I'm a Loo) inasmuch as _they_ had decided to christen his clothing—again. _Bloody hell. Shouldn't your child be trained not to relieve himself away from the loo before you let him ride someone around like a sodding camel?_

He'd thought they had a fool-proof plan: he'd helped Molly Weasley prepare for the children to visit on Easter by setting the Easter eggs she'd made around the garden and house, and the children had all enjoyed searching for eggs while the mothers and grandmothers sat in wicker chairs, chatting, and the fathers—Potter and Weasley—disappeared into the house or Arthur Weasley's garage workshop, where Arthur and Bill were examining enchanted Muggle contraptions that Draco was certain were illegal. Longbottom wasn't present, fortunately, since he was called into service at the last minute as a substitute Azkaban guard. His gran was liberally sharing her opinions on everything with Molly Weasley and Granger.

Potter's son was hanging about with Percy Weasley's and Snape's sons. Potter's twin daughters followed Bill Weasley's veela-like daughter everywhere. Percy II watched his sister, brothers and cousins ride on his uncle but did not ask for a ride himself, being nine years old. Fortunately, Snape and his Muggle wife were off on holiday—the Isle of Wight—so there were two fewer people to get out of the way.

 _Now if only they'd all eat enough chocolate to get knocked out at the same time!_ Children were _supposed_ to gobble up chocolate far faster than this lot had. He hadn't counted on Granger giving out sugar-free chewing gum from her parents, telling them to brush their teeth after eating sweets. The children were like human dairy cows, chewing compulsively, when they should have been eating Draco's drugged Easter eggs!

 _That sounds like a good product name,_ he thought ruefully, trying to keep himself amused and distract himself from the pain in his knees and lower back, not to mention the stench of baby urine. _Draco's Drugged Easter Eggs. Now with even more knock-out potion, to keep your annoying ankle-biters unconscious._

He resisted the temptation to glare at Granger as she sat with Longbottom's grandmother, Molly Weasley, the French bitch, The Loon and Potter's wife. Through overhearing more than a few conversations he'd learnt about how long the Longbottoms had tried for a child before Frances was born. It gave him even more satisfaction to think of robbing their little brat of her magic. Then he saw something out of the corner of his eye: The Loon offering an egg to Granger, Potter's wife and the French bitch. Molly Weasley was already eating one. He grunted, returning to entertaining the children and getting them to trust 'Uncle Percy'.

 _It won't be long now._

#/#/#

"Yes, your body," Harry said to Ron. "I said that I told Ginny about this, remember? I _had_ to tell her because when I got back from Parvati's and had decided that I wasn't going to cheat on her, I suddenly became a _ghost_ , Mad Eye was alive again, and the girls all suddenly turned into ghosts too. They started falling through the bed because they didn't have bodies anymore!" Ron stared at him, open-mouthed, as Harry went on. "I had to tell myself that I would find a way to go back in time and it all fixed itself, though we had to get someone to come from the Ministry to help poor Charlotte."

" _That's_ what all that was about?" Ron shouted.

"Did you turn into a ghost, too?" Harry asked anxiously.

"Not me. But Lew sent me out on loads of leads, stories about other wizards who said they'd turned into ghosts and back again. I thought it was just the usual barmy stuff he asks me to write. What are you _saying_ , Harry?"

He took a breath and seemed to be trying not to shake. "I think that when I considered _not_ doing it I changed time a little. Enough that some people who'd been dead were alive again, like Moody, and some people who were alive were dead. Or not even born, like my girls. Ginny was okay. And you. And most other people I know. But not all of them. Ginny thinks that the girls weren't actually ghosts, exactly, but more like _echoes_ of life-force, or life-potential, something like that."

Ron stared at Harry, incredulous. "Harry, are you telling me that to _preserve_ this timeline you have to find a way to time-travel and cheat on my sister?"

"Oh, no! Time!" Harry cried suddenly, glancing at the clock hanging over the cooker. "Isn't your mum serving Easter dinner about now?"

Ron glanced at his watch. "Bloody hell." He frowned as he stood. "And somehow I have to forget about all of this while I eat with my sister and try to seem _normal?_ "

Harry's mouth twisted as they walked to the door of the house. He patted Ron on the back and said, "That's okay, Ron. No one _ever_ expects you to seem normal."

Ron put his elbow in Harry's side but Harry only laughed. He seemed more cheerful than he had when he'd started telling Ron about his problems. As they walked away from the house Ron said, "It's a good thing Tilda and Snape are on holiday. I wouldn't want to be you and face the mother of your son after finding out about this."

Harry stared at Ron. "Don't you mean you wouldn't want to be Tilda and face _me_?"

Ron peered at him. "Does that mean you've confronted her about this?"

Harry turned away. "Well—no. I mean, now I know why she never said anything. She'd have been telling me about the future, after all. That's not supposed to be a good idea."

Ron shook his head. "Yeah, but you know _now_. The damage is done."

Harry shrugged. "Still, I'm probably not supposed to know about this."

"We should stop talking about it, since we're going back. My old room again, you reckon?" Harry nodded and they each raised their wands. Very quickly, the sheet-draped furniture and crates of Ron's old room appeared before them. Ron steeled himself for the inevitable questions from his mother about where he'd been as he walked down the stairs behind Harry. The house was strangely quiet.

No one was in the large dining room that had been added to the house, nor in the old kitchen. Several pots on the cooker had very bad smells coming from them and Ron ran to salvage the food. Harry went to the sitting room. "No one here, either," he told Ron. "Maybe we're supposed to be eating later?"

Ron shook his head. "No, the food's burnt. And Mum told me—" He glanced out the kitchen door and gasped, running into the garden. Harry ran after him. Ron sank down beside Luna, who sat in a wicker chair beside his mother, her head rolling on her chest, eyes closed. She seemed to be napping but when Ron tried to rouse her he couldn't. His mother also appeared to be asleep, as well as Hermione, Mrs Longbottom, Ginny and Fleur. Each of them had partially-eaten Easter eggs in their laps.

Harry glanced around frantically after checking to make certain that Ginny, Hermione and Fleur were breathing. "Where's your dad? And Bill and Percy? And the kids?"

Ron cast about for a place that all twelve children could be with his father and brother. "The garage?" Harry was already sprinting toward the ramshackle old barn-like building.

"Your dad and Bill and Percy are here, but the kids aren't!" Harry called from the garage. He ran back to Ron and the two of them searched the garden. Harry looked as lost as Ron felt. Then Ron had a brainstorm: "Wait a minute, Harry! You know how you told me about that prank the twins sometimes pull? Making it look like they're gone, when they're just hiding? What if they did something like that, and roped the other kids into it too?"

"I reckon it's possible. They must have done something to knock out the adults, but I can't work out what it is. They're not stunned. I tried using the standard revival spell. They're breathing and all, but—"

Ron turned toward the house, another thought slowly forming. "Wait a minute, Harry. The clock!"

"The clock?"

"The Weasley clock! Dad added new hands for the grandchildren! C'mon!"

Harry ran after Ron, asking, "What good will that do? Does it have a setting that says, 'Playing a prank,' or 'Being a bloody pain in the ar—"

Ron ignored him, dashing into the sitting room and staring at the clock. He was still staring at it when Harry arrived beside him, also staring at the hands for Ron's children, Harry's children, Bill's daughter and Percy's son. There were no hands for Frances or Julian, but Ron suspected that if there were, they would be pointing to the same place as the hands for his parents' grandchildren.

Every single hand for the children pointed at _Mortal Peril_.

#/#/#

 **Please be a responsible reader and review.**

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Listen to **Quantum Harry, the Podcast,** available on iTunes, Stitcher and on the **Quantum Harry** YouTube channel. Subscribe today!

You can also follow me on Twitter **QHPodcast** and/or Instagram **bl_purdom**.


	44. Secret-Keeping

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 **Chapter Forty-Four**

 **Secret-Keeping**

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"Where the hell _are_ they?" Blaise Zabini fumed, pacing the floor of his drawing room. He glanced at the sleeping children. It hadn't been easy or comfortable to travel with a dozen kids via Portkey—three trips in all—and he had carefully checked that each of them was breathing after they'd experienced a rather bumpy landing. Since they were all unconscious it had been rather complicated to make certain that each one was touching the old hat Blaise had used for transport, and none of them could approximate a graceful landing in their sleep. Some of the awkward positions in which they'd landed made him fear that they'd broken bones. They had to be in _perfect_ health—and conscious—for the Power Transference spell to work properly.

And then they would all be killed.

He also worried that the bumpy ride might wake them, but they seemed thoroughly drugged by the Easter eggs, so he would neither have to lie to them nor worry about their seeing his face. After checking for the third time to make certain that they were quite unconscious, Blaise lifted his wand and Apparated to Wiltshire. He had a _bone_ to pick with his incompetent minions.

He arrived in the cold, empty Malfoy drawing room and immediately started shouting, "Crabbe! Goyle! Why aren't you at my house?" His bellows echoed off the hard surfaces and high ceiling of the bare, dilapidated room, and after a few seconds he heard their voices above.

" _We're up here, Blaise_!"

" _Bloody hell_ ," he muttered, going into the entrance hall and up the grand stairs. " _Stupid, incompetent_..." When he reached the top he still didn't see them.

"Where are you, you flaming idiots?" he called affectionately.

"Crabbe's room," came Goyle's voice.

Blaise sprinted up another flight of stairs and found Percy Weasley in the corridor outside Crabbe's room, sweeping the floor with a well-worn broom.

"Excuse me, Weatherby," Blaise said, pushing past him and storming into the room.

"Yes, sir," Percy mumbled deferentially as he was shoved against a wall.

#/#/#

As soon as they were in the room, Percy swiftly glanced up and down the corridor and took an Extendable Ear from his pocket, to listen to what they were saying. As his memories of his old life had improved he remembered that he had this yet and took it out of his old suitcase, stashed under his bed. He'd had it in his pocket when Lucius Malfoy had put the memory charm on him and still had it when he was found in Gibraltar by the police. It was the only tie he had to who he had been but the police had been able to make neither head nor tail of it. Nonetheless, Percy held onto it, hoping against hope that it might one day jog his memory and help him to regain what he had lost. He finally had remembered, and he was _very_ glad that he hadn't binned the strange, fleshy thing back when he'd decided to start a new life as a clerk.

He'd been listening to Crabbe's and Goyle's slow, thick voices for a while before Zabini had returned and they said basically the same things to Zabini that they'd been saying to each other.

"We would have been there—" came Crabbe's sluggish voice.

"We _tried_ to come—" Goyle started to say, just as slowly.

"—but we couldn't remember where to go—"

"—and we kept _trying_ to remember as hard as we could—"

"—but it kept slipping away from us, as if—"

"What are you idiots talking about? I told you this morning, as plain as the stupid expression on Crabbe's face: come to number three Gimgroinahoppetser Street, Froygleheister, London."

Percy made a face; yes, that was what Crabbe and Goyle had been saying, but it didn't make any _sense_. He didn't know London from end to end, but he was fairly certain he'd never heard of a place called _Froygleheister_. _Gimgroinahoppetser Street_ also sounded extremely unlikely.

"Right! That's what you said!" Percy heard Crabbe cry with what passed for indignation with him. "But we can't find that on any map of London and we've been all over Muggle London to one map shop after the other. Tried to take a Muggle taxi there as well, since London cabbies are supposed to know where everything is, but they just kept laughing in our faces." This was more than Percy had heard Crabbe say in the previous thirty minutes of continuous conversation with Goyle.

"We even did some, erm, nasty things to a couple of Muggles we thought were just refusing to help us to be berks—I wouldn't put it past Muggles— but they really didn't seem to know what we were talking about," Goyle added.

Blaise Zabini swore _very_ loudly before saying, "Oh, bloody hell! Let me write it down for you."

Percy heard the scratching of a quill on parchment, then Crabbe declaring, "That doesn't even look like letters! How do you expect us to—"

"It's perfectly legible! Are you completely illiterate?" Zabini counter-attacked.

"No, it's not!" Goyle declared. "And I may not have been at the top of our year, but I know English when I see it, and that ain't _it_!" Percy was starting to wonder whether the three of them would just kill each other, leaving him only Narcissa, Pansy and Draco to deal with—wherever Draco was. He thought he was probably at The Burrow, pretending to be _him_ , but he wasn't certain. Were the children all right? he wondered. Had they been kidnapped yet?

He got his answer a second later, when Zabini said, "Listen, I've had enough of this; I've got twelve unconscious kids at my house and I need the pair of you to stop acting as if your brains have been sucked out of your skulls by—by a Brazilian Brain-Sucking Tree Newt. Now stop fooling around and—"

The sudden, almost complete silence worried Percy. He stuffed the Extendable Ear in his pocket, to play it safe, and moved a few feet down the corridor, to avoid the appearance of eavesdropping. It was lucky that he did this, as the three Slytherins emerged from Crabbe's room a second later, pushing roughly past him on their way to the stairs.

"Should have thought of this sooner," he heard Zabini muttering as he passed.

"Yeah, you should have," Goyle grumbled as he followed Zabini. "I mean, if Mrs Malfoy's your Secret Keeper, then she's the only one who can tell us where your bloody house is, ain't she?"

"Shut up," Zabini shot back at him. "I remembered eventually, didn't I? We'll just get Narcissa to tell you and then you can go over there and—"

They were out of earshot now. Creeping as close to the top of the stairs as he dared, he peered down carefully, to see whether he could see the tops of their heads, as there was a danger they could look up and see _him_. But they'd already begun to walk down the corridor to Narcissa's bedroom, so he was safe. Going to the floor below as quietly as he could—still wielding his broom, which Zabini didn't know was a _flying_ broom Percy had removed from the broom shed and made appear old and utilitarian—Percy began to process what was going on.

They had used the Fidelius Charm. Narcissa Malfoy was the only one who could divulge the location of Blaise Zabini's home, so when Blaise himself had attempted to tell Crabbe and Goyle where to come before he'd left to kidnap the children it had come out like gibberish and they still had no idea where to go.

Feeling glad of incompetent dark wizards, Percy peered down the corridor, glad to find it empty. He swiftly crept to the room beside Narcissa's and let himself in, going to the wall between the rooms to use the Extendable Ear to listen again. However, before he reached the wall, let alone taking the pink Ear out of his pocket, he heard a shrill voice behind him.

"What do you think you're doing?" demanded Pansy Parkinson.

Percy turned to find Pansy wearing nothing but a towel, having just emerged from the bath. He felt like slapping himself. He'd forgotten that this was Draco's room. "Erm, um," Percy started to say when he noticed the pale legs visible below her towel, the skin just dusted with water from her bath. They weren't _bad_ legs, as legs went. He tried to force himself to blush—thinking of his first time with Penelope helped—and he addressed his shoes, mumbling, " _I have a confession…_ "

He paused long enough to make her ask indignantly, "Well?"

"I—I fancy you," he blurted out suddenly, lifting his eyes to her unfortunately very pug-like face.

To his surprise she didn't scream or hex him. Her wand was within easy reach, on the table behind her. Pansy blushed a little before remembering who she was—and who _he_ was—and her indignation returned. "Might I remind you—?"

"—that Mr Malfoy has been very kind to me," he began, inching toward her, "and given me a home and a job," he added, though the job didn't come with a salary, "and you are his girlfriend." She seemed to have the wind taken out of her sails due to his saying what she looked like she wanted to say. "I know it makes me seem terribly ungrateful," he went on, trying to avert his eyes both from her towel-covered bosom, in case she threw a fit about that, and her face, because it was rather difficult for him to maintain the fiction that he fancied her while staring at a woman who resembled a small, yappy dog _that much_.

He was highly aware of the weight of the former spoon in his apron pocket, the fake wand he'd been working on to look like Pansy's. Ever since he'd finished it he'd been carrying it around wherever he went in the house on the slim chance that he might be able to swap it for Pansy's real wand and _there it was_ , sitting not eight feet from him, in plain sight, growing nearer as he moved his feet forward by infinitesimal increments. He was having a rather difficult time not staring at the wand as if he adored it. He tried to direct his adoring gaze to Pansy instead. _You have a lovely wand there, my dear. You don't really need it, do you?_

Evidently his declaration of love—such as it was—had softened Pansy somewhat, and she was giving him an appraising look. "I'm taken, you know," she said coyly.

"I—I understand completely, Miss. And you would never be unfaithful to Mr Malfoy," he continued, wondering whether he was prepared to go as far as she was in this game—however far that was.

She took a step toward _him_ and he thought _PenelopePenelopePenelope. Just think of Penelope._

"You know, he doesn't pay much attention to me lately," she said, pouting, near enough to touch his arm. His stomach writhed within him but he tried to seem pleased.

"I can't imagine why," Percy responded, shaking his head in sympathy even as he was turning the pair of them so they had traded places and he stood in front of the table with the wand.

"Neither do I!" Pansy declared before flinging herself on him and crying into his neck. The contact jolted Percy for a moment, but he'd already managed to reach behind him and pick up her wand. While she cried on him and he patted her back with one hand he took the fake wand out of his pocket with his other hand and placed it on the table.

Suddenly, he pulled back. "Miss—I don't think this is strictly appropriate. I—I should go." He moved quickly toward the door, adding, "I respect you far too much to do anything that could possibly besmirch your honour." He hoped that would sound properly priggish and not as though he were full of hot air, only pretending to be attracted to her.

It worked. She looked as if she might actually be falling for _him_ and this was the final thing that pushed her over the edge. "How gallant!" she sighed as he left.

Percy leaned on the door, his heart thumping loudly. _I need to hear where the house is, I need to hear where the house is,_ he thought, just as the door to Narcissa's room opened. He leapt behind a suit of armour as quickly as he could when Zabini, Crabbe and Goyle emerged from Narcissa's room and walked briskly past his hiding place.

"Have you got that now?" Zabini demanded. "Can the pair of you go there and do what I've told you to do?"

When they were gone Percy swore silently. He'd missed it! He needed to trick Narcissa into giving up the information to _him_ in some way.

And then he remembered how Dumbledore had first given him the information about the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix: written on a piece of paper, delivered by Fawkes himself. Fawkes could not be intercepted, like other delivery birds, and though other members of the Order were not to know, at first, what Percy was doing, he always went disguised as another member of the Order, usually Bill or Remus—when Dumbledore had assured him that neither Bill nor Remus were there already. In this way he was sometimes able to meet with Dumbledore in London.

Percy wished he was still working under Dumbledore's protection as he crept from behind the armour and let himself into the bedroom Blaise used when he stayed at the Malfoys' but did not wish to share Narcissa's bed. He was about to do something he'd been planning for a while, but sooner than expected. There was no help for that; he had to learn the secret of where Blaise Zabini's house was _now_. If he waited Narcissa would be suspicious and his cover would be blown by a Malfoy— _again_.

Finding a hair on a jumper in Zabini's laundry hamper, he added this to a flask of Polyjuice Potion he had secreted in his apron, along with Pansy's wand. Over a period of months, he had surreptitiously stolen a drop here and a drop there from Draco's flask when he was sleeping, making certain that he stole pure potion and not something that had had a body part added to it. He didn't think that he had even thirty minutes worth of potion, so he needed to work quickly.

He dressed in one of Zabini's robes first, one as close as possible to what Percy had seen him wearing minutes earlier. The potion took effect quickly and painfully, and in fact it felt like he was transforming twice, for some reason. After checking the mirror to be certain that he looked like Zabini, he crept into the corridor, wand out. It was a strange sensation to have one in his hand again. He realised that it would have been a good idea to cast a spell or two in Zabini's room, to test the wand, see how well it responded to him, but now that he'd taken the potion there was no time to spare. He would have to take his chances with Pansy's wand. He let himself into Narcissa's room without knocking, surprised to find her still in bed, tucking his armed hand between the folds of his robe to hide the wand. To his dismay, she smiled lasciviously upon seeing him.

"There you are! Got rid of them yet? I know you're cross with me for not letting them in here without you, but since when do I invite _them_ into my bedroom? You're another story, of course," she added, holding out her hand to him. Her lank blonde and grey hair spilled over her shoulders and chest, her sallow complexion looking as if it hadn't seen the sun in years.

Narcissa's writing table sat near the windows. Percy always made certain that there was an inkwell and quill at the ready, plus a pile of curling parchment, though Narcissa seldom wrote to anyone. "I am afraid there is no time for that, my dear," he said, unused to Zabini's voice coming out of his mouth. He'd always strongly disliked using Polyjuice when he'd been in the Order. "It's those two idiots. They already can't remember what you told them. If you write it down I can charm the parchment so that only they can read it, and I can put another charm on it to keep them from losing it. It'll practically be following them around."

She raised an eyebrow as she emerged from beneath the covers. Percy panicked for a moment, worried that she might be naked, but she wore a filmy white nightgown—which might as well have been nothing when the light was behind it. Over this she drew a slightly shabby dressing gown. "If they're that bad, why on earth keep them around?"

"Why did Draco ever keep them around? They're convenient. In their way. Up to a point. They serve their purpose." Percy hoped he sounded convincingly curt.

She shrugged and walked languidly to the writing table, as though she had all day, while inside his head Percy screamed, _Could you walk a little more slowly, you old hag?_

"Couldn't _you_ write it out for them?" she asked, even as she sat and drew a piece of parchment toward her, picking up the quill and dipping it tentatively into the ink. Her slowness was starting to make Percy think he would explode.

"It has to come from your hand, as the Secret Keeper," he told her, though he thought she had a point. Since she'd already told them, it was possible that Zabini _could_ write it down for them and they'd be able to read it. He hoped she wouldn't see through this as he watched her write, _Blaise Zabini lives at number three, Albemarle Street, Mayfair, London,_ in a sweeping flourish. Trying not to sigh from relief, he thought, _There. Now I know. I can't tell someone else, but I could go there myself._

"Thank you, my darling," he said, trying to maintain the façade that he was Zabini. However, she was staring at him with her mouth open and he had a bad feeling that his tiny bit of Polyjuice Potion had already worn off. He swiftly pulled out Pansy's wand, crying, "Stupefy!"

She went rigid as a board and fell to the floor, obviously not expecting 'Weatherby' to have a wand nor recollect enough about being a wizard to cast a spell. The glimpse he caught of himself in the overmantel looking glass showed that he had returned to his own appearance. After tucking the parchment into his apron pocket, he levitated her into the bed, tucking her in carefully. Before going to the door, he removed Zabini's robes, which he stuffed into a laundry hamper before reviving her, Obliviating her, and putting the wand away.

Narcissa Malfoy's eyes clouded over and she looked dreamy and unconcerned. When her eyes came into focus she frowned at seeing Percy in the open doorway.

"Yes, Weatherby? What is it? What are you doing in my bedroom?"

"I thought Mr Zabini said that you wanted me to come up. Perhaps I misunderstood?"

She frowned more deeply, then seemed to think better of how this would affect the lines on her face. "Yes, you must have done. Please prepare my breakfast. Oh, and don't forget Miss Parkinson's tomatoes. She _loves_ them," she added smugly.

"Yes, Ma'am," Percy lied, having no intention of doing such a thing. _It would be extremely ungrateful of me after she was so stupid to let me take her wand_. "I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. Breakfast will be in fifteen minutes." _Miss Parkinson had her breakfast hours ago, and most people are eating their Easter dinners now._

"Make it thirty. I'm going to draw a bath. You can make _her_ food sooner, though."

"Yes, Ma'am," he repeated before leaving.

He was not, however, going to prepare any food before he paid a visit to the scullery, where the large, dark eagle owl had his perch near an open window. Percy read the parchment again with Blaise Zabini's address on it, hoping that this would work. Ideally, since it had been written with Narcissa Malfoy's own hand, anyone receiving this parchment would, in effect, be told the secret by Zabini's own Secret Keeper, and they would therefore be able to find his house and the kidnapped children.

But he couldn't leave it at that. Sitting at the small desk in the scullery where he wrote shopping lists for Crabbe and Goyle, he took a piece of parchment and dipped an old owl feather in some thin, brown ink. To whom should he send it? His father? His mother? It should be someone who would believe in him, but someone who had been in contact with Draco while he was pretending to be Percy, so he might convince the person that he really was _him_ , while Draco was not.

He cursed himself for not thinking of blowing Draco's cover sooner, for not sending an owl to the Ministry telling them of Draco's escape from prison. But even though that might have temporarily protected the children, it would probably have been his own death sentence, since they would no longer have had a reason to keep him alive. It might even have endangered the children sooner, if Blaise Zabini decided to take them by force instead of subterfuge.

He thought of seeing Pansy and Narcissa in their bedrooms and realised to whom he should write: the person he'd most wanted to see since he'd returned to Britain from Gibraltar.

 _My dearest Penelope…_

#/#/#

Penelope's vision cleared and she looked around; she didn't do magic very often and was a little concerned about Apparating to The Burrow, in case she was rusty at it, but she didn't want to put up with the chaos of the Knight Bus, let alone the time-delay from waiting for the bus to go to stops that weren't hers. She needed to get to the Weasley house and she needed to get there _now_.

As soon as she arrived she knew something was terribly wrong, but that wasn't a shock after reading the letter from Percy.

 _Percy_. She had no doubt that the letter really was from him. After she read it, the world made so much more _sense_ , though there were also things she knew now that made her mentally cringe. _I shagged Draco Malfoy_ , was the first cringe-worthy thought. If she'd taken the Knight Bus she wouldn't be able to tell whether she was spewing because of the ride or because of thinking about what she'd done with Malfoy.

 _Nate and Julian. He's going to hurt my little boys._ It didn't matter that Nate was fifteen and Julian nine; they would always be her little boys. She knew it was a hazard of being a single mother, but despite knowing that Severus would do _anything_ for Julian (and Nate as well) and despite 'Percy' having returned (though now she understood why he had never _really_ seemed attached to Nate), she was the one who was responsible for them on a daily basis, at least until Nate had gone off to Hogwarts. And even then, she wrote to him daily, sent him care-packages, and thought of him often. Julian wouldn't be ready to go to Hogwarts for another two years and she was glad of that. He missed his brother dreadfully and talked about being able to see Nate more often once he was at school with him, though they would only overlap for one year. Julian's first year would be Nate's last.

 _When I get my hands on Draco Malfoy,_ she thought, _I am going to kill him._

The garden of The Burrow was a strange sight. Wicker chairs that had been standing in a circle had been hastily vacated, it seemed, for some of them had been tipped over and not righted. The remains of Easter baskets lay scattered about, the shells of chocolate eggs littering the ground, and for some reason garden gnomes reclined beside the eggs, snoring. While this was odd—she seemed to remember that gnomes preferred to sleep underground—she didn't dwell on it. Her sons were more important than gnomes.

She heard anxious voices coming from the kitchen, including Harry's distinctive voice rising authoritatively above the rest, and she hurried across the vegetable patch, heedless of the seedlings she crushed under the soles of her trainers. She'd been planning a quiet weekend at home, since the boys weren't going to be with her and her parents were on a trip to America to visit relatives there. It hadn't occurred to her, before Apparating to the Weasleys', to change into more 'wizarding' clothes than her old jeans, a stretched-out cotton jumper and her battered trainers. She didn't care that she didn't look like a proper witch—or even a proper adult, according to her own mum. She just wanted to protect her sons.

Everyone was in the kitchen and pandemonium reigned. Harry stood at the head of the battered old table, leaning on it with his hands. He seemed like he was biting his tongue while Molly Weasley spoke:

"Those eggs haven't been out of my sight! I made all of them myself. How could they be drugged?" Her wild red-and-grey hair flew about her head in a tangle and tear-tracks were clearly evident on her cheeks. Her husband put his arm around her shoulder. He was the first to notice Penelope arriving.

"Penelope!" he cried, blanching. "Did you come to get, erm, because you see, if you did—we're doing our best to work out what happened, but—"

Penelope shook her head. She didn't have the patience to deal with Arthur's inability to finish a sentence right now, nor the guilt with which he seemed to be wrestling. She glanced around the room quickly but did not see Percy or anyone pretending to be him. "I came because I know _exactly_ what's happened to—to the children," she said, her voice shaking as she raised the fist in which she grasped the parchment the real Percy had sent to her. At the last minute she remembered to be concerned for _all_ of the children, not just her own sons. Percy had told her that Nate and Julian weren't the only ones in danger.

"I know where they are."

 **#/#/#**

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#/#/#

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	45. Captive

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Forty-Five**

 **Captive**

Teddy groaned as he stretched and opened his eyes. Why did he feel so stiff and bruised? Had he been thrashing about in his sleep?

He stared around at the room in which he found himself, remembering that it wasn't the morning after Easter, he wasn't back at school, and he hadn't just slept in his familiar four-poster bed in Gryffindor Tower. He'd been at Ginny's parents' house, gamely helping the younger children with the Easter Egg Hunt and occasionally having to throw gnomes over the hedge when they became truculent about giving up the eggs the children had found. The last thing he remembered was helping Hal and Cedric crack open their eggs and fish out the smaller eggs and chocolate rabbits inside. They'd freely shared their bounty with him—and then everything was a blur and blackness and then—here.

Wherever _here_ was.

It appeared to be a grand drawing room, long and slim and tall, with ornate silver ornamentation on the pale green, panelled walls and chimney breast. A polished grey marble mantel surrounded a cold, dark fireplace and numerous unlit candles sat in silvery sconces on the walls. The very high ceiling was painted with scenes that told him he was definitely in a wizarding house, for they appeared to be depictions of goblin wars he'd heard Professor Borodin talk about, and Professor Binns before him, until they'd exorcised his spirit from the castle.

Beside him, Nate still snored, his glasses askew on his freckled face. The right earpiece was missing and the left lens was cracked through the middle. Teddy tentatively touched his own glasses before taking them off and examining them. They seemed all right, if a little bent in the middle, across the nose-piece. After putting them back on he reached into his pocket for his wand, to fix Nate's glasses. He was used to doing a little magic outside of school when he was at Harry's or the Weasleys', where magic was arguably done by more than one adult wizard, though he would never dare to perform a spell at Latere Farm or on the Isle of Wight.

His wand wasn't in his pocket. It was gone. He looked around frantically, wondering whether Nate had _his_ wand, and that's when he heard other people in the room. He stood cautiously, walking around the couch where he and Nate had been sleeping, propped up beside each other. There was another seating arrangement behind theirs, with more couches and some armchairs. On this furniture he found his sisters and cousins and the other children who'd been involved in the Easter Egg Hunt.

Was it a coincidence? Was this a prize for finding the eggs? He didn't think so. The children and babies seemed to be sleeping peacefully, their deep breaths slow and even. He went back to Nate and tried to shake him into wakefulness and after a minute Nate started to frown in his sleep, mumbling, "All _right_ , Mum, all right! I'm getting up, I am…"

"I'm not your mum," Teddy said tersely. "Wake up! We've got an emergency here."

Nate stretched and groaned, as Teddy had done, before looking around, his eyes confused and then wild. He pushed his glasses onto the top of his head, rubbed his eyes, then tried to position the spectacles on his face again, immediately missing the right earpiece.

"Bugger! Mum's going to kill me! She says I go through glasses as if—"

"Your mum scolding you for breaking your glasses again is the least of your worries. Look where we are! And look at _them_." Teddy stood and walked around the couch, showing the other children to Nate.

"Julian!" Nate immediately cried, going to his knees beside his little brother. He shook Julian lightly but the younger boy did not wake. Nate lifted worried eyes to Teddy.

"What's wrong with them?"

Teddy shook his head helplessly. "I don't know. And I don't know why I woke up first and why you're awake now but they're not. Let's see if we can wake up anyone else."

Nate tried one of the twins—it was impossible to tell if it was Ruby or Rory with her eyes closed—while Teddy tried the other twin. Finally, the one Nate had been shaking started to groan and sit up, her eyes still closed.

"Ruby? Rory?" Nate said anxiously, continuing to shake her. She finally opened her eyes enough that Teddy could see that the right one was green. He sighed with relief.

"Ruby, are you all right?" Teddy asked anxiously.

She glared at him as only an irritated little sister could, squirming as she stretched dramatically. "No, I'm _not_ all right. I've never felt so stiff in my life. Has someone been using me for a Quaffle in a Quidditch match? And where in the bloody world _are_ we? What happened?" she demanded, staring around the strangely formal room that had had a dozen children dumped into it.

"Dunno," Teddy said, hoping she would calm down but not sure what he could say or do to help this to happen. "Last thing I remember I was helping Ced and Hal find eggs," he said, pointing to the six- and seven-year-old boys.

"...and I was helping Jules and Perce," Nate added, pointing at his brother and his and Ruby's cousin. Both boys were still unconscious.

Ruby seemed as if she was calming a little. She nodded and rubbed the back of her head, saying, "Yeah, Rory and Marguerite and I were helping the little girls," she said, gesturing toward the slumbering Charlotte, Diana and Frances, who were leaning against Rory and Marguerite. The babies had brown smears all over their faces and their chocolatey fingers were thrust into their mouths while they slept. Ruby tried shaking Rory but she still did not rouse, just as Julian had not.

Ruby shrugged. "I'm not surprised. She was eating a _ton_ of chocolate. You know how she's always knocked out when she eats a lot. I reckon in a few years you'll be able to tell us apart by which one is the size of a baby dragon, not just by our eyes."

Nate frowned. "That's not a very nice thing to say about your sister, Ruby. And she's not awake to defend herself," he scolded her. Ruby rolled her eyes, used to Nate by now.

But something Ruby had said caused a spark to go off in Teddy's mind. "Chocolate!" he exclaimed suddenly, fixating again on the chocolate smears marking the smaller children's faces. Julian was liberally decorated with evidence of his excess, as was Rory and even Marguerite. Hal, Cedric and young Percy looked as if they'd been to visit a chocolate factory. "I hardly had anything—I didn't want the kids to think I was just helping them because I wanted their sweets—and you probably didn't have much, either, Nate, because—"

"—because I like toffee best!" Nate exclaimed.

Ruby grimaced and gave Nate a disgruntled look. "Oh. Me too," she said, as if it pained her to admit that they had this in common.

Teddy was elated by his small victory. "So that's it! The chocolate knocked us out, but we didn't have as much as the others, so we woke up first! That means they'll come round eventually, depending on how much each of them had. The little ones might take longest, since just a bit would probably go a long way with them."

Ruby snorted. "You might be surprised. Marguerite and Rory between them didn't let the little girls get much. I'm used to Rory, but Marguerite's mum started restricting her sweets when she turned eleven last year, because she doesn't want her to get fat and have problems with her complexion. And she doesn't usually have a lot of sweets at school, because she doesn't want the other Ravenclaws to think she has no control," Ruby said, rolling her eyes again. She and Rory had continued to hang about with their pretty cousin when she wasn't Sorted into Gryffindor, like they were, but the other Ravenclaws didn't make this easy. Marguerite was very popular, though extremely shy. "So—when she got her hands on some of the chocolate eggs, she went a bit—well, _insane_. I've never seen her like that. She's usually so _dainty_ about everything."

" _Anyway_ ," Teddy said, cutting in, "we need to wake the others and find out where we are."

Ruby was surprisingly calm now. She shrugged again and said, "If the chocolates knocked us out that means that Nana did it, because she made them, so she and the rest of them must be here somewhere. This must be some sort of Easter surprise. I reckon we're not having dinner at The Burrow after all."

Teddy wasn't so sure. He surveyed the room, sceptical. "But then, where _are_ we? And why weren't they here when we woke up?"

"Maybe she expected you to eat more chocolate and the others to eat less. We could be at Hogwarts. This is a little like Professor Nott's quarters. He invited us and Mum and Dad to tea in his rooms a few times. It's very posh, like this place."

Teddy looked around more optimistically. "But not _just_ like this, right? Hm. Maybe it's Professor Borodin's quarters?" he mused, hoping ardently that he was wrong. The new History master gave him good marks and seemed favourably disposed toward him, due to his being responsible, with Nate, for his getting the job, but he doubted that the rather priggish professor would invite Teddy's entire extended family to use his Hogwarts flat for their Easter dinner.

One of the other children groaned amidst the contented snores. Julian started to move, showing signs of waking. Nate shook him vigorously. "Jules! Wake up!"

When he had finally opened his eyes, Teddy, Nate and Ruby explained what had happened, as far as they knew. Julian looked around, very interested, but could offer no alternative explanation for what had occurred apart from Nate's grandmother having a weird sense of humour. This prompted Teddy's next epiphany.

"Humour!" he cried, slapping himself on the brow. "I'll bet Nana didn't make these eggs at all—I'll bet she bought them from the twins! Your uncles," he explained to Ruby, who grimaced disdainfully.

"I _knew_ what you meant. But—I'm not so sure. A couple of times when Mum was talking to Nana in the last week she was talking about making the eggs herself."

"Well then, Fred and George came over and put something in the chocolate when she wasn't looking. I'll just bet they're at the bottom of it!"

He felt almost happy, for what harm could come from one of Fred and George's pranks? His dad and Ginny had been surviving their senses of humour for years, and the worst that had happened to them had been temporarily turning into poultry. It would be all right. Fred and George were just having fun.

"Maybe this is their place. Didn't they say they wanted to move out of the flat above the shop? Said they were looking for a nicer place in Muggle London, wanted to do a bit of decorating, too, to make it more wizarding. That would explain the ceiling," he added. Ruby and Julian squinted up at it and Nate examined it again through his one good lens.

Now Ruby was the sceptical one. "I don't know. It doesn't seem very _them_ , does it? I reckon they could have just told the artist to paint what he liked, but all of this seems pretty un-Fred-and-George, at least to me. They've told me and Rory about loads of pranks they've pulled—Mum is afraid we'll get ideas, but she doesn't always manage to stop them—and this is just _different_."

They couldn't seem to agree on whether Fred and George had anything to do with their predicament. While they argued about it the other children eventually woke. The older ones wanted to know where they were and why, and Teddy and Nate had to admit that they didn't know. Frances started to cry but Marguerite picked her up and sang to her in French, quieting her. She leaned her head on Marguerite's shoulder, thumb thrust into her mouth. This also served to entertain little Charlotte and Diana for a while, but soon all three babies—and the youngest boys as well—were displaying signs of crossness and irritability.

Keeping order was sapping both Teddy's stamina and his patience. Though Nate was the eldest, everyone seemed to be looking to _him_ to solve petty disputes, of which there were plenty, every few minutes, or so it felt to Teddy. He wasn't able to get far in exploring the room and trying to work out where they were because of the squabbles he was constantly being asked to arbitrate, so he put Nate to work trying to open the shutters on the windows. They were latched shut in some invisible way, possibly magic, in which case there wasn't much Nate could do without a wand. His was also missing, and the three first years—Ruby, Rory and Marguerite—were also missing their wands.

When Teddy's stomach started making almost as much noise as the whining Hal and Cedric, he realised what the problem with the little ones was: they were hungry. Ruby and Rory were sniping at each other in a way that had also become familiar to him. They habitually did this while waiting for their tea at St Clare's Chapel, and now that they were Hogwarts students and didn't go back to St Clare's on the weekend, they did this when they were waiting for the evening meal at Hogwarts. He wasn't certain what time it was, as he didn't have a watch, but it felt as if it had been a long time since they'd eaten the drugged chocolates. He wondered whether the person who'd brought them here had completely forgotten about them.

"Quiet!" he cried suddenly, trying to cut through the noise of Ruby and Rory's row; Marguerite shushing Frances, Charlotte and Diana; Julian and Perce having a pillow fight; and Hal and Cedric pulling each other's hair.

No one noticed.

Sighing, he strode to one of the tall doors on the wall opposite the towering, shuttered windows and started pounding on the green-painted wood, shouting, "Hello! Is anyone there? We've been in here for a long time and we're hungry! Hello? Anyone? _Oi_ _!_ "

To his surprise he heard footsteps on the other side of the door. He backed up to the couches, where the other children were. When one of the doors opened the others finally stopped making noise, even the babies, and Nate turned around and put his hands behind his back where he stood at one of the windows, trying to seem as if he had _not_ been trying to open the shutters.

Two hulking figures entered, wearing long black robes with hoods pulled over their heads and eerie white masks under the hoods. They had both drawn rather stubby wands. One closed the door and stood in front of it, wand at the ready, should the children get any ideas about bolting.

Teddy glanced at the others. The twins were obviously terrified, their eyes large and round, and Marguerite was trembling on her chair as she held Frances and Charlotte closer to her chest. Julian and Perce looked at each other uncertainly while Hal and Cedric pulled their little sister Diana closer and made her sit between them, all three staring at their captors in fright.

"You all right?" came a slightly thick, unhurried voice from under a hood. Teddy regarded the others, then the hulking figure. Teddy glanced at Nate, still standing by the window, but Nate did not move. It was up to Teddy to speak for them all. He stepped forward, barely coming up to the chest of the large wizard who'd spoken.

"Where are we? How did we get here?" he demanded, trying to keep his voice from shaking and wishing he could see their faces. He didn't think they'd be as frightening then. He stood his ground, swallowing and waiting for a response. The man seemed to peer at him with interest through the eye-slits of his mask, and Teddy trembled when a pale, meaty hand reached out and held his jaw, turning his face from side to side, examining his left and right profiles.

When the hand released his face, Teddy rubbed his jaw. The wizard turned to the one standing guard at the door, saying excitedly, "Oi, Greg! He really does look just like him!" Many people would have said this somewhat urgently, but the wizard's speech was as laconic as before.

"No, he don't. Not _just_ like. Different eye colour. And no scar, o'course," came the equally unhurried response from "Greg", though he sounded more alert than Not-Greg.

"Well, yeah, I can see _that_ , but _look_ _!_ 'Mazing, innit?" the large wizard mused, tilting his head slowly to examine Teddy, as if he'd appear different from another angle.

Greg did agree that Teddy's resemblance to his father was amazing, which made Teddy wonder what sort of kidnappers these could _be_. When they were talking to each other they weren't very frightening at all. They even seemed rather childlike, which gave him an idea.

" _Who_ do I look like?" Teddy asked innocently.

"You know who!" Not-Greg said. "No, I don't mean You-Know-Who," he went on, shaking his head. "You don't look nothing like him, o'course. _Him_! Harry Potter!"

Teddy smirked. "Well, he _is_ my father. I don't know, though…"

"What don't you know?" Not-Greg asked him.

"I don't know how you can claim that I look just like my father when you've probably only seen photos. _Everyone_ thinks they know what he looks like."

Not-Greg snorted as he laughed. "Oh, I _know_ what Harry Bleeding Potter looks like. I should do—went to school with him for seven years. _And_ I had my face up in his more than once, showing him a thing or two with my fists," he added with what seemed half-hearted menace. Teddy tried not to smile. He'd managed to get Not-Greg to reveal a little bit about himself.

Teddy shrugged eloquently. "Oh, okay. If you say so. Sure, whatever. You went to school with Harry Potter _and_ you beat him up. Uh-huh," he added, trying to sound as unconvinced as possible. He glanced at the twins out of the corner of his eye and to his relief the girls seemed to understand what he was doing. Ruby covered her mouth and laughed into the palm of her hand, while Rory tried to hold her mouth shut, her eyes merry, before failing and bursting into laughter, which she immediately tried to stifle with a hand, like Ruby.

"And my sisters sound _so convinced_ , too," Teddy said, in a voice that was as patronising as he could manage. His mother had scolded him for this more than once, telling him that at nearly fifteen he was far too young to speak in a patronising tone of voice to her.

Not-Greg could tell that Teddy's words were not sincere. "I did so go to school with'im! Had Potions until sixth year and Care of Magical Creatures in years three, four and five! Played Quidditch against him, too, and wasn't he just shaking to see one of us hitting a Bludger at him! Don't tell me _I don't know Harry Potter_!" he proclaimed, poking a beefy finger in the middle of Teddy's chest.

Teddy's heart was beating very fast and felt like it was going to leap out of his chest. But this wasn't because of the enormous finger poking at his ribcage.

 _Bloody hell._ _I know who they are_.

#/#/#

"You _do_?" Molly gasped. "You know where they are? But how—? Oh, dear! We should get Percy down here. He went up to the loo—"

"No!" Penelope cried quickly. "You can't! Then he'll know—" She stopped abruptly, looking first at Percy's parents, then at Harry, who was frowning deeply. He'd clearly taken charge of the crisis. "You see," she tried to explain, dropping her voice and glancing nervously toward the doorway to the hall, "that _isn't Percy_."

Molly stared in disbelief. "What? But he was—he was just giving the children horsey rides on his back a little while ago. Did someone kidnap him as well? And take his place?" she whispered in horror. She turned in tears to Arthur. "Just when we'd got him back, he's been taken from us again!"

Penelope didn't argue about the 'just'—Molly made it sound as if Percy had walked in the door five minutes earlier—but answered her, "No. You never had him back. He's been an imposter the entire time. So that he could do _this_ , take our kids."

Harry was solemn. Holding out his hand, his voice low and even, he said, "Can I see that parchment, Penelope?"

She nodded, glad that he was here, and walked to the head of the table to give him Percy's letter. He read it quickly, Ron, Ginny and Hermione craning to see it over his shoulder, and the three of them gasped as one as they read what Percy had written. Harry did not gasp but drew his lips together into a grim line, his eyes glittering with malice as he ground out the hated name between clenched teeth:

" _Malfoy_."

#/#/#

 _It's Crabbe and Goyle, Draco Malfoy's old cronies._ Teddy hoped his face didn't show his epiphany. Harry had told him several amusing stories about the pair of them. Was this an old vendetta, then? Why had they kidnapped the other kids as well if this was about Harry? He thought he remembered Harry giving more than surnames to Crabbe and Goyle but he couldn't remember. On the off chance that 'Greg' went with 'Goyle' he decided that Not-Greg was Crabbe.

Teddy shrugged again, hoping neither one of them would hex him. "I said okay. You don't have to be so defensive. If you say you knew him, you knew him. Fine. The only thing is—the little ones are pretty hungry. If you're going to kidnap us, can you at least feed us?"

"And we're going to need nappies for the babies," Ruby added.

"And a loo. You can't expect us to relieve ourselves out in the open," Rory said, wrinkling her nose.

"One thing at a time!" Crabbe proclaimed, sounding disoriented at their rapid words. Teddy wondered whether he grew confused when people spoke quickly. "First—yeah, we're gonna feed you. Kitchen's downstairs. I need to charm the food up through the floor here," he said slowly. He took out his wand and appeared to be concentrating very hard on the tea table in front of the couch. He finally shouted a spell—Teddy couldn't understand what he'd said, as it was a bit garbled—and waved his wand. Nothing appeared on the table.

Crabbe swore, making Marguerite proclaim, "Language!" in a stern and disapproving voice, her hands over the ears of the babies. Crabbe turned to her and actually _bowed_.

"Erm, sorry, sorry, not used to little kids."

Hal, Cedric and Diana peered under the table where the food was supposed to be. "Here it is!" Hal told the rest of them. "But—but most of it seems to be stuck in the floor."

Teddy crouched and looked under the table. Sure enough, some apples and bananas were protruding through the carpet, though a plate piled with toast seemed to be intact. Teddy straightened up.

"That's it? You put some fruit on a plate, made some toast, and that's what we're supposed to eat? Plus, we can't even eat the fruit, since it's only half through the floor. And there's nothing to drink."

"I made a pot of tea!" Crabbe told him, clearly embarrassed by his shoddy spellwork. "And there's milk for the babies!"

Cedric touched the carpet under the table, pulling his hand away as he made a face. "Yes. It's here. The tea and milk's _in_ the carpet," he said, with a serenity that reminded Teddy of his Aunt Luna. He stooped again and confirmed this.

"Ced's right. It's sodden. Well, thanks for the effort, I reckon. You meant well." Teddy tried his best to sound like one of his most hated teachers at his primary school. Mrs Ringgold always made it _sound_ as if she was commending Teddy or another student for their 'effort' when the real meaning that came from her tone was that no one in the world could _possibly_ have made _less_ of an effort nor produced anything more inferior.

Crabbe seemed to get Teddy's meaning. "Well, I'd like to see _you_ do better."

 _Yes, so would I,_ he thought. _Just give me your wand._ Teddy stood and looked as directly as he could at Crabbe's eyes, through the mask. "If you take us down to the kitchen we can probably fend for ourselves, and I promise we'll behave. We just want to eat."

"And to go to the loo," Julian said in a pinched, high-pitched voice, his legs crossed and his face rather red.

Crabbe sighed, turning to Goyle, who hadn't moved or said anything else. The two put their heads together, standing before the door and speaking in low whispers that still sounded rather slow to Teddy. Considering how long it took each of them to think and speak he wondered whether they'd get an answer within the hour.

Crabbe finally turned to them and said, "Okay, here's how it is. I'll take half of you to the kitchen and he'll take half of you to the loo. We don't have nappies but we could just use magic to clean them up, yeah? Okay, let's go."

"Magic? To clean the nappies? I'm sorry," Ruby said haughtily, "but I don't want you getting your wand near the babies. You'll splinch them or something."

 _Shut up, Ruby,_ Teddy thought crossly. However, her words seemed to have the effect of further undermining Crabbe's self-confidence.

"Erm, okay, well, we'll look for something to use for nappies."

"Couldn't you just _buy_ nappies? Honestly, you didn't think this through, did you? Kidnapping babies without proper supplies," Rory said, shaking her head over their lack of preparedness. Teddy was trying not to laugh at the sight of his almost twelve-year-old sisters chastising their huge kidnappers.

"You _can_ Apparate, yeah?" Teddy said suddenly, hoping to catch them off-guard. Crabbe looked back at Goyle, then at Teddy again.

"Well, no, not as such…"

Goyle laughed. "You kept Splinching yourself at the examination! They were going to name a ward after you at St Mungo's."

Crabbe turned to him, and Teddy was certain that he was scowling under the mask. "You didn't do any better. Twelve miles off the mark was your best go, wasn't it? And your clothes about five miles on. I don't see _you_ Apparating all over the country, do I?"

The twins and Marguerite tittered over the idea of Goyle's clothes going somewhere else when he Apparated and Teddy was finding it hard not to laugh himself. Instead he cleared his throat. "Anyway…"

Crabbe turned back to him. "Yeah. Right. Well, we're _near_ some Muggle places where they have nappies. Probably. Easy as pie. That'll have to wait until after you've eaten and visited the loo. Once you're back in here one of us'll go to a shop for nappies, yeah?"

Teddy tried to seem pensive without revealing his elation. _We're near Muggles! That's something, at least. We're not in the middle of nowhere_. "Okay," he said to Crabbe. "That sounds all right." Teddy felt distinctly strange that these hulking men, who had wands while he did not, were deferring to him. He almost felt bad that he was trying to work out a way to get the better of them. They weren't terrible ogres. He assumed that they were working for someone else and wondered what the someone else wanted with twelve children, including all four of Harry Potter's kids. Then he decided that he didn't care if he never found out. He just wanted to get them all safely _home_.

When they were escorted into the corridor by their captors, they found that the reason for the long, narrow drawing room was that they were in a long, narrow house. It was rather clear, once Crabbe and Goyle started leading them down the stairs to the kitchen and bathroom, that the house was only about nineteen or twenty feet wide, as the doorways opened only off one side of the stairs and Teddy could _see_ how deep (or rather, how shallow) those rooms were. The wall on the other side of the staircase seemed to be dividing the house from the next property and there were no windows in this wall. _We must be in a terraced house in a city,_ Teddy thought. _Most likely London_.

As though reading his mind, Nate said, "This is a lot like the building where we have our flat," as he looked up and down the stairs.

"There's even a skylight at the top, like at our place," Julian added, pointing up to the roof of the house, several flights above their heads. He walked by Goyle's side, as he wanted to go to the bathroom first. Goyle looked up.

"Yeah," he mused softly, through his mask; "I like the window up there. Gives a lot of good light," he said slowly before continuing down the stairs, his hand on Julian's shoulder much more as if he were helping him, not threatening him.

Teddy nodded but did not speak. If this was the same sort of building Nate and Julian lived in they might know where things were that he wouldn't know, having only lived on Latere Farm and at Hogwarts, plus visiting St Clare's Chapel and Severus's cottage on the Isle of Wight. Nate and Julian walked down the stairs as though perfectly at home. He thought it possible that houses in other cities could be laid out like this one and like Nate and Julian's, but the strong possibility that this meant that they were in London was encouraging to Teddy. If they could only get outside they stood a chance of escaping. They could even be quite close to the Clearwater flat, or if not in the same part of the city, they might be someplace Nate recognized.

As he sat in the huge old basement kitchen eating chicken under Crabbe's watchful gaze, Teddy glanced at little Percy and at Rory and Ruby, who were feeding Charlotte and Frances between feeding themselves. Nate, Julian, Hal, Cedric, Marguerite and Diana had gone to the loo with Goyle. _Yeah,_ he thought, feeling more dispirited. _A dozen kids from babies to teenagers are going to be really inconspicuous travelling around London on Easter—or anywhere._

He wondered how they had come to be in the house in the first place. Floo powder? That would explain why many of them complained of aches and pains they hadn't had back at the Burrow. Teddy couldn't imagine someone carting the twelve of them along while riding a broom and the only other form of magical transport he was familiar with besides the Hogwarts Express was the Knight Bus. He _definitely_ could not picture someone taking twelve unconscious children on the Knight Bus (though a bus ride would _also_ explain the bumps and bruises). The other passengers, even if they were busy spewing, would be bound to notice the kidnapping of a dozen children.

Especially if one of them was the spitting image of The Boy Who Lived.

 _Dad!_ Teddy thought. _Dad'll do something. He'd never stand by and let someone take his kids._ This made him feel a little better, as he remembered some of the things he'd read about his dad doing when he was young. But then he thought, _Would Dad have just waited around for someone else to save him? Or would he have tried doing something himself?_

He swallowed his food and watched the other children, his three sisters, his step-cousin who was named after Nate's dad—when Uncle Ron and Aunt Luna thought Percy was dead—and at Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom's little girl, thinking of his father telling him that Hermione and Neville were like a brother and a sister to him. He thought of young Percy's brothers and sister, their cousin Marguerite, and of Nate, the best mate anyone could have, and his thin, weedy little brother, Severus's son, who was also Teddy's step-brother now. And he knew that it wasn't just up to him to _speak_ for them all.

It was up to him to _save_ them all.

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	46. Turning Pansy

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Forty-Six**

 **Turning Pansy**

 **#/#/#**

Draco had left the Weasleys' kitchen for three reasons: first, he really did need to use the loo; second, he knew that his Polyjuice Potion would wear off soon and he wanted to spend some time alone, as _himself_ , before looking like Percy again; and third, he'd been having difficulty keeping a straight face and feigning concern over the missing children. _Stupid blood traitors! They have no idea who they're dealing with._

He'd been gone for almost half an hour and would need to return to the kitchen and play the role of the distraught father without letting on that _he_ had drugged Molly's Easter Eggs _as she was making them_ , playing the helpful son, assisting his 'beloved' mum. _Blergh_ , he thought, picturing Molly's flushed face as she heated the chocolate with her wand and caused it to pour into the moulds. _Perhaps,_ he reflected, _I'd have turned out an idiotic blood traitor as well, with her for a mother._

He started to open the bathroom door but decided instead to Apparate to the garden rather than walking down the stairs to the crowded kitchen, so he could eavesdrop under the open window near the cooker. That way he could laugh all he liked (after putting a silencing charm on himself) instead of continuing to pretend to be so _concerned_ about the children. He'd just leave the bathroom door locked and Apparate back upstairs if they started wondering what was taking him so long. In a trice he was in the garden, near the hedge. He crept around the unconscious garden gnomes who'd evidently eaten what was left of the Easter eggs. When he reached the kitchen window he settled himself comfortably on a burlap-covered flower bed, ready to be amused.

To his surprise, he heard Harry Potter's voice growling, " _Malfoy._ "

Draco immediately felt his face all over. Yes, he definitely looked like Percy Weasley. He could also see the freckled arms and red hair out of the corner of his eye, and the glasses he wore were still necessary to correct his vision. It had been an easy matter of duplicating the spectacles worn by 'Weatherby' the first time Draco went out as Percy. Potter evidently _hadn't_ spotted him through the window, looking like _himself_. So why did he say _Malfoy_ like that? What was going on?

There was a flurry of noise as loud footsteps pounded on the worn old kitchen floor, into the hall, and up the rickety stairs. " _Harry! Ron!_ " Granger called. There was a distant sound of voices shouting spells as the rest of the party in the kitchen also ran up the stairs. A _crack_ of magic produced a splintering noise—the bathroom door, he realized. This was followed by the crash of breaking glass and a lot of very loud swearing. Draco was certain that he even heard _Molly Weasley_ swear. He broke out in a cold sweat, glad that he'd Apparated to the garden and wasn't finding out first-hand what spells Scarhead and the Weasel were using in the bathroom. _They know I'm not Percy!_

He lifted his wand to Disapparate, but a nagging voice in his head said, _How do they know?_ As he pondered this, he heard footsteps return to the kitchen. He crouched lower against the wall of the house and held his breath, terrified, but he had to find out what had happened. He kept his wand clutched tightly in his hand, ready to make his escape as soon as he learned how much they knew.

"Already gone." That was Granger, the stupid bint.

"We should have known," Arthur Weasley said, sighing noisily. "I can't believe—"

Another cluster of feet returned to the kitchen, and the accompanying voices overlapped each other in a frantic conversation that had the odd effect of making Draco feel much calmer. They thought he'd already got away. He was safe for the moment. Plus he had a bit of insurance in his pocket.

"But what if Pansy's wand isn't very—effective?" said a familiar voice after the hubbub died down and he could make out individual voices.

 _Penelope! What's she doing here?_

"I think it'll do. Pansy got by in school. It seems to have served her well," came Potter's voice. Then Granger must have done something because he went on, "Yes, Hermione, I _know_ she wasn't in your league. But she did get a handful of OWLs and went on to sit a few NEWTs, which is more than you can say for Crabbe and Goyle."

The Weasel—Draco was certain that it was him—made a disgusted snorting noise that made Draco want to hex him. "Too right. That'll help, it will, that they're involved. I think you're right, Harry. Pansy's wand against those two incompetents shouldn't be a problem."

 _Pansy against Crabbe and Goyle?_ Draco thought. _What's going on here?_

Penelope spoke again. "I couldn't believe it when that eagle-owl started rapping at my window. Scared me out of my wits! I was so glad to read the letter—though not to know that, well, you can imagine…"

 _Eagle owl?_ Draco thought. _My eagle owl?_

"Yeah," the Weasel said quickly. "At least now we know. I'm going to get my kids back and then I am going to _kill_ Draco Malfoy."

"Get in line," Granger told him. "If he hurts Frances..."

 _Bloody hell!_ _They really do know everything! But how? Who sent my owl to Penny? And how do they think they're getting their kids back? They don't know where they are, and couldn't get into the house anyway. We'll be through with them long before they even get close, and by then they'll all just be lifeless bodies_.

Draco decided that it was time to leave. He knew he should return to his house and ask Pansy what they had meant by talking about her going up against Crabbe and Goyle. Had she betrayed them all? Had she meddled with the Polyjuice Potion? She must have sent the owl to Penny. Perhaps Zabini was right about her. _I hate it when Zabini's right_ , he thought crossly.

But just as he raised his wand to Apparate to Wiltshire, he heard Harry say, "Has everyone here read the parchment about Zabini's house? According to the letter, Narcissa Malfoy wrote it herself, and she's Zabini's Secret Keeper, so that amounts to her telling anyone who reads this."

"Pass it here," Arthur said urgently; then he read it aloud: " _Blaise Zabini lives at number three, Albemarle Street, Mayfair, London_. Got it."

 _Bloody hell!_ Draco thought again, sweat beading on his forehead. _They know where to go!_

He Disapparated a second later. There was no time to lose. They had to move the children to Wiltshire as quickly as possible!

And he had to decide what to do with that traitor, Pansy Parkinson.

#/#/#

Arthur handed the parchment back to Harry as a faint _pop!_ Came from the vicinity of the garden; Harry looked at the window expectantly but saw no one there, so he decided that the noise must have come from the cooling dinner on the cooker. He turned back to the others gathered in the kitchen. Arthur had instinctively crumbled the parchment after reading it and was trying to smooth it out on the table, while he could see that Hermione was over her anger and in the throes of her emotional side, rather than her rational, planning side. Tears hovered in her eyes as she started to turn to Ron, but he neatly sidestepped her and put his arm around Luna, so Hermione ended up clinging to Harry. He noticed Luna glancing back and forth between Ron and Hermione, her expression giving nothing away as usual. He couldn't tell what she knew or didn't know.

Ginny was grim and Penelope paced impatiently while Molly followed Hermione's example and flung herself at Arthur while he was still smoothing the parchment with Blaise Zabini's address. Bill held Fleur tightly, saying, "Why hasn't there been anything on the Wireless about Draco Malfoy escaping from prison?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't know. But we need to do this right. Hermione, you go to the Ministry and convince them to let us have some Aurors—preferably Tonks and Shacklebolt—to take the Slytherins into custody. Penelope, do you have a mobile? Never mind, use mine. Ring up Severus and Tilda and tell them what's happened. You and Hermione bring the Aurors and Severus to the back of Zabini's house. Hermione, take the Secret Keeper's parchment and show it to Tonks, Shacklebolt and Severus before you go into the house. The rest of us will come in from the back first and disable any alarms or wards they have on the place."

Harry heard the popping noise again just before Hermione said, "What about Neville?"

"I'm sorry, we haven't time to wait for him. For us to get a message up to Azkaban—"

"—would be completely unnecessary," Neville finished for him, striding into the kitchen from the garden, his face flushed as if he were in a tearing hurry. Harry realised that the popping noise had been Neville Apparating. When he saw the stricken-looking faces around him Neville immediately asked, "What's wrong? What's happened?"

Hermione turned and fell on him, sobbing. "I was just about to owl you—"

"Why? I thought I'd stop by to say 'Happy Easter' very quickly before going to the Ministry. The situation I'm reporting has likely been that way for a while, so I reckoned I could afford to see you for a few min—" He stopped abruptly, as Hermione had backed up and was looking at her husband in shock. "I'm not shirking my duty," he said hastily, evidently thinking that was the reason for his wife's reaction. "It's all strictly business. Guess who wasn't in his cell when we came round with the Easter dinners?"

As one, everyone else present said, " _Draco Malfoy_."

Neville looked dumbfounded and was speechless for a moment. He turned to stare at Harry. "Okay, Harry, that was just _eerie_." Then he glanced around the kitchen, frowning. "What's going on? Where are the kids?" he asked his wife.

"Here," was all Hermione said. She thrust Percy's letter at him, while Arthur gave him the wrinkled parchment on which Narcissa Malfoy had written the secret she was keeping for Blaise Zabini. When he had read both, Neville looked up, his eyes wide with fear and the hand holding the parchment shaking visibly. "I-I'm glad I came back." He looked around the room again. "H-how many of them?"

"All twelve," Harry told him. "My four, Ron's four, Penelope's boys, Marguerite and your little Frances." He explained the plan to Neville but Neville wanted to change it slightly.

"I'll go to the Ministry with Hermione. Penelope can fetch Snape. I think the rest of you should get over to Zabini's before any more time passes. I'll take the parchment and show it round to anyone at the Ministry who joins the raid." Neville's voice was a little calmer but Harry could see the worry behind his eyes.

Harry agreed and a moment later Hermione and Neville Disapparated at the same time as Penelope. Harry nodded at the rest of them and they raised their wands. The noises from their Disapparating echoed in the empty kitchen while their Easter dinner languished on the cooker, burnt and uneaten.

#/#/#

Draco looked around. He had successfully Apparated to the entrance hall of Zabini's house. Behind him the usually raucous sound of the London traffic was subdued because of the holiday.

He rubbed his hands in anticipation. He couldn't _wait_ to stop playing the doting father to Nate and 'stepfather' to Julian, Snape's bastard. But first he would have a little fun with the kids—before pulling the rug out from under them.

Draco frowned when he heard children's voices on the stairs above him. They were _laughing_ and _cheerful_! Why were their captives _laughing_?

He crept up a flight so he could see better. Crabbe was tossing Granger's baby in the air and catching her, saying cheerfully, "Who knew? I can change nappies! And I like babies!" he added before carrying the child into the drawing room.

 _What is that wally up to?_ And Goyle—was he really carrying two little boys up the stairs, one on each shoulder, and singing a silly nursery rhyme with them? Draco recognized little Hal and Cedric, whose piping voices combined strangely with Goyle's booming off-pitch bass. He knew it was Goyle because he was half a head taller than Crabbe. At least the idiots had done _something_ right and were still wearing their masks and hoods. He decided he would quite enjoy what he was about to do, even more than he'd originally anticipated. When he'd first thought about it he hadn't known that Crabbe and Goyle would make him _want_ to stun them quite this much.

"Stupefy!" he cried, pointing his wand at Goyle. Hal and Cedric screamed shrilly as he went over and just avoided crushing them. However, with the resilience of youth they were up in a trice, staring at Draco, who still wore Percy's face. He put his finger in front of his mouth, to indicate that they weren't to say anything. They nodded, wide-eyed, as he crept past them. Crabbe, slow as ever, came lumbering to the doorway of the drawing room, where he'd evidently given the baby to someone else.

"What the—?" he started to say when he saw Draco wearing Percy's face, but a moment later Draco stunned him as well and he also crashed to the floor, narrowly missing Hal and Cedric again. This brought Teddy and Nate running to the door.

" _Dad_!" Nate cried, hurling himself at Draco.

He thumped Nate on the back congenially, grinning. "There you all are. Safe and sound, I trust? Everything all right?"

"It is now that _you're_ here! Wow! And here I thought it would be Uncle Harry who'd—" Nate stopped abruptly, reddening. "I mean, it's not that I didn't have _faith_ in you—"

"I understand," Draco said magnanimously. "Is everyone here? All twelve of you?" Nate nodded, clearly proud as could be that his father was their rescuer. "Everyone gather round here," he told them, going to one of the couches and picking up a small, square cushion. "Now, I'm going to make this into a Portkey, understand? We'll be out of here in a trice. But _everyone_ needs to be touching it, so someone has to help the babies."

They were completely cooperative, jabbering at him nonstop, making his head ache, but he smiled and nodded and accepted their thanks. Draco felt odd for a moment, seeing the upturned faces, the older girls holding the babies, the trusting expressions of the little boys, including his 'namesake', who flung his arms around Draco's waist and cried, "I'm glad Mummy and Daddy gave me _your_ name, Uncle Percy! You're a hero!"

Draco swallowed and carefully removed little Percy's arms. "That's—that's grand," he told the small boy, who still beamed up at him. A strange ache started up in the vicinity of his stomach. _Bloody hell. The sooner we're out of here, the better._

Suddenly a crash erupted from the rear of the house and he thought about Azkaban again, his small cell, the long stretch of empty days, weeks, months, years... " _Portus_!" he cried, concentrating as hard as he could on his house, his mother's house, the large, empty drawing room there. "Everybody get ready—the others are coming! They're in the house! Three…two…one…"

And they were off, in a swirling maelstrom of light and colour and chaos, the children bouncing all around him as they flew toward Wiltshire and safety, away from Harry Potter and the others who would just love to put him back in prison. The thirteen of them landed in an awkward tangle on the floor of his mother's drawing room. Some of the smaller ones were crying, but the older kids tried to pacify them. Draco stood and brushed himself off, surveying the children again, from the teenagers to the babies. Everyone seemed to be all right. That was good. He swallowed, feeling strange again. _Soon I'll have all of their magic and they'll be dead._

But for some reason this thought made him go cold inside. His stomach felt like an icy, leaden weight at the idea of looking each child in the face and cursing him or her, removing that spark of life forever…

He couldn't take it any longer, he had to leave. _Making me soft_ , he thought crossly, shaking himself. _They almost got me sent back to Azkaban._ No matter what, he was _never_ going back. "Stay here!" he said to Teddy and Nate, annoyed with himself for his temporary weakness. "I'll be right back."

He let himself into the hall, closing and magically locking the door behind him, breathing a sigh of relief. They believed they were rescued! It had worked. All the time he'd spent as Percy Weasley had paid off. The children trusted him completely. He was their hero. This thought made him feel strange again, but in a different way. No one had ever looked at him the way Nate and little Percy and the other children had. He'd _never_ been anyone's hero in his entire life.

He heard footsteps on the stairs and shook himself angrily. _Little warts, messing with my mind_ , he thought, as the familiar change stole over him. He looked down to see the fine red hairs and freckles disappearing from the skin on his arms as the footsteps drew nearer. He took off the spectacles and put them in his pocket.

When the real Percy Weasley stood before him, a surprised expression on his face, Draco knew that he'd reverted to his own appearance, because Percy immediately said, "Good afternoon, Mr Malfoy. Will you be joining your mother, Mr Zabini and Miss Parkinson for tea? Are Mr Crabbe and Mr Goyle expected?"

Draco felt paralysed. Percy had the same, blank servant look that he usually wore, no longer appearing to be surprised. "Um," he said, hesitating. "Right. Tea. Listen, we have a dozen guests for tea. In the drawing room. Meet me back here with, let's see, eighteen toasted cheese sandwiches, some fruit, biscuits, a pitcher of pumpkin juice, a pot of tea, a pitcher of milk, and—well, that should do, actually."

"I _always_ provide milk with the tea, Mr Malfoy," Percy said, clearly nettled. This seemed odd to Draco for some reason. But then, he felt odd in general.

"Sorry, Weatherby," he said immediately. "I didn't mean milk for the tea. There are some babies. I meant the milk to be for them. In addition to the tea milk. Oh, and a dozen extra cups and plates."

"Yes, sir. Very good." Percy nodded and did not question his orders. He turned toward the kitchen without looking behind him. Draco watched him go, wondering how he would have felt if he really _had_ been meeting his son for the first time when he'd met Nate.

Shaking himself and feeling rather cross again, he went to the dining room, where he expected to find Zabini and his mother and Pansy. The Pansy problem needed to be dealt with _immediately_.

#/#/#

Percy turned slowly and walked in the direction of the kitchen without any indication that he felt a need to rush. He wasn't certain that Draco Malfoy was watching him but he didn't want to take chances.

Once he was in the kitchen, all bets were off. He waved Pansy's wand, making food and dishes fly into place on a tray, so everything was ready in no time. However, he knew that he shouldn't return with the food too soon or it would seem odd. He also had to resist the urge to Apparate into the drawing room and meet his son.

Why were the children _here_ instead of in London, at Zabini's house? He wondered whether he should dare hope that Penelope had already received his owl. Did everyone know now that the man they'd _thought_ was Percy Weasley was really Draco Malfoy? He couldn't imagine another reason for Draco to have brought the children to Wiltshire.

Unfortunately, he had to conclude that Draco Malfoy also knew that his cover was blown. It had done no good for Percy to have owled Penelope. The children were in more danger than ever and he was extremely unlikely to convince Blaise Zabini to write out the secret he was keeping for Narcissa Malfoy, so Percy could send another parchment to possible rescuers.

He had failed. Again.

Percy's throat tightened as he thought of the failures in his past, one of which was responsible for his having missed fourteen years with his son—and even longer with the woman he loved.

 _No_. No, he would _not_ accept defeat. That was not going to happen. Those children were not going to lose their magical power and their lives, not on _his_ watch.

He picked up the tray of food and took it to the hall outside the drawing room. Placing the tray on a chair beside the door, he tried turning the knob but met resistance. Malfoy had locked the door with magic. Putting his hand in his pocket and wrapping it around the wand, he pointed the tip of it, through his apron, at the locked door, furiously thinking, _Alohomora!_ He didn't dare speak the spell aloud but he'd performed this spell non-verbally many times in his life with no trouble.

Nothing.

If he Apparated into the room—assuming Malfoy hadn't used a jinx to make that impossible—he would blow his cover as a dupe who still thought his name was Weatherby, which would probably make it completely impossible to save the children. It was time to continue to be the model servant. He picked up the tray and walked to the dining room. After placing the tray on a table near the door he knocked to be admitted.

"Yes?" came Zabini's impatient voice.

"It's Weatherby, sir."

"Not now, Weatherby! We have a situation—go away!"

He moved closer to the door, frowning, wondering what was going on. The children had been moved to the Malfoy house, so wasn't everything going swimmingly for them? He tried the knob. The door wasn't locked, so he let himself in, despite Zabini's words, saying, "Mr Malfoy had me prepare food for guests in the drawing room but I cannot take it to them because the door is locked."

To his surprise, he found that Malfoy and Zabini had Pansy Parkinson up against a panelled wall, their wands pointing at her throat, while she looked back and forth at them, wide-eyed. Narcissa Malfoy stood nearby, her arms crossed and a satisfied smirk on her face that distorted her features into something very similar to a stereotypical wicked witch's visage. All she needed was green face-paint, dark, wiry hair and a pointed hat to look like every Muggle child's image of a witch.

"I didn't say you could come in, Weatherby!" Zabini growled.

Percy decided to ignore him, maintaining his composure as best he could, as though Pansy were _not_ being held at wand-point, looking like she expected to be hexed any moment. "What would you like me to do with the food, Mr Malfoy?" he said, turning to address Draco, who looked more reluctant about cornering Pansy than Zabini or Narcissa. Percy's heart was beating very fast. _What's going on?_ He understood Narcissa being hostile toward Pansy, but Malfoy and Zabini? It didn't make sense.

Both Malfoy and Zabini ignored Percy. "How did they find out, Pansy?" Zabini demanded. "Why did you tell? Thanks to you, Crabbe and Goyle are probably under arrest. Draco had to leave them behind."

"That's not my fault, it's _his_!" she proclaimed. "I don't know what you're talking about!" She looked at Draco desperately. He backed up and paced, neither looking at her nor answering Percy's question. Percy decided that if he hovered near the door he might find out what was going on. He decided not to say anything else about the children or the food. Something was very strange here. He'd always heard that there was no honour among thieves—which also meant, presumably, kidnappers—but he'd never seen it demonstrated in the flesh. Why had they turned on each other?

"You don't know anything about how Potter found out about the kids being at my house? Nothing at all?" Zabini said menacingly, backing up from her a little. Pansy put her hand in her pocket and Zabini immediately pointed his wand at her again. " _Expelliarmus!_ "

The crackling light hit her and made her slam against the wall. She was winded but still managed to pull her wand from pocket—except that it wasn't her wand, Percy knew. It was the handle of an old wooden spoon from the kitchen. She pointed it at Zabini and tried to disarm him in turn—but nothing happened. Zabini didn't even fly backward. Both she and Zabini frowned at their respective wands but Percy knew what had happened: the Disarming Charm didn't work on the wooden spoon because it wasn't a weapon and she hadn't even been holding it as though it were a device that could be used for stabbing or at least poking. And since it wasn't a real wand she couldn't use it to disarm anyone in turn.

The effect for the others, however, was that magic had ceased working in the dining room of the Malfoy house. He could tell that the four of them were quite perplexed by this development. What perplexed _him_ was how they'd got the idea that Pansy had informed someone of the children's location. Perhaps, not crediting him with being anything but a dupe, they'd decided that Pansy was the only candidate left. That meant that anything that happened to her was _his fault_ , just as the children's fate would be his fault.

Malfoy, Zabini and Pansy continued to stare at their wands. Percy saw Pansy's eyes flicker up and down the useless piece of wood in her hand. "Wait, this isn't—" she started to say.

"A little test," Zabini said at the same time, ignoring her. Percy was unprepared for Zabini to point his wand at her and cry, " _Crucio_!" before she could finish voicing her suspicion about her 'wand'.

The curse hit her for a long moment before Percy could make his feet move. Knowing that she was under suspicion because of him, he couldn't just let her suffer, no matter what he thought of her taste in boyfriends. She was on the floor, screaming shrilly from the pain, a blood-curdling shriek of agony. He threw himself on top of her and was unable to stop a scream from his own throat when the curse hit him full-force. He abruptly remembered, as the pain travelled to every nerve in his body, the times he'd been tortured while spying for Dumbledore, something even his efforts at memory-retrieval had not allowed him to do before this. His mind had evidently decided to protect him from those memories. But he remembered being tortured now, as his mind screamed for mercy and Pansy shivered beneath him, no longer suffering.

" _Stop! Stop!_ " someone shouted in his ear. After Zabini lifted his wand, looking very confused, Percy realised that the person shouting was Pansy. Percy was breathing very quickly, looking around the room, trying to bring his eyes back into focus by blinking rapidly. The pain still felt like it was with him, a dark cloud just out of his range of vision. Then, quite suddenly, he couldn't see anything as Pansy threw herself on him and hugged him tightly. When she let him breathe again she stood shakily and offered him a hand. Once they were both on their feet she put her arm around his waist and glared at Draco, his mother and Zabini, her chin lifted proudly. Somehow Percy thought it would be rude to pull away from her but felt very uncomfortable nonetheless.

"Torturing me! When I've done absolutely nothing! And _he_ protected me! I can see who _really_ cares about me!"

She steered Percy toward the door. He looked over his shoulder at the Malfoys and Zabini, who were clearly still in shock. His own shock was considerable. When they were about to go through the door, however, Draco stepped toward them. "Pansy! _I_ didn't curse you."

She turned and sneered at him. "No. You just told Zabini that I had betrayed you, and then _he_ did it." She looked back and forth between them, obviously quite hurt. "It's clear to _me_ who's been betrayed." She swallowed and her eyes shone with unshed tears. Percy suspected that what had really cut her to the quick was not Zabini's reaction but Draco's belief in her treachery. He'd seen both of them display what he felt certain was genuine affection toward each other and Draco suspecting her was obviously quite jolting to Pansy.

However, as she helped Percy toward the kitchen he took hope from the news that Crabbe and Goyle were very likely arrested. He suspected that, through sheer stupidity, they'd crack very quickly while being questioned. The only problem was how to bring the authorities to the Malfoy home while it was still protected by the Fidelius Charm. For that problem he had no solution.

Yet.

"You just sit. I'll make tea," Pansy said, her voice quivering. Percy wished he had the strength to get up and stop her but it was too late. She pointed her 'wand' at the cooker and tried one incantation after another that she thought should produce a fire, but none worked. Percy hoped she wouldn't examine her wand again. She seemed to have forgotten, after being tortured and rescued, that she'd been about to say something about this.

"It's all right, really. I don't want tea. You were also tortured—you should sit. Perhaps you can't cast a spell right now, because of, erm, being tortured. You're drained."

She frowned, sitting beside him. "So—you know what happened in the dining room? The magic? You know that Narcissa and I are witches and Draco and Blaise are wizards?"

"Well—" he started to say, reluctant to admit this and trying to think quickly. "I've suspected for a little while that you all had—abilities—that most people don't. But at first I thought it was mad to think that. Why would people who could do magic need someone like me to cook and clean, after all? But after what just happened in the dining room—" He couldn't help putting his hand to his neck and rubbing; it was as though the curse had made all of the nerves in his neck ache permanently. Unfortunately, Pansy noticed this and stood behind him, starting to give him a neck rub that was quite possibly more painful than the Cruciatus Curse.

"It's true that we _could_ do our own cooking and cleaning. It's a class thing, I suppose. Lower class people like your fam—I mean, like families that don't have as much money probably use cooking and cleaning spells all the time. I've never actually done either, so it's no wonder I couldn't light the cooker. There's probably a specific spell I should have been using."

Percy was glad to hear that, as it would be even less likely that Pansy would suspect her wand was a fake due to this failure. He smiled weakly at her, but when he turned his face away from her again he indulged in grimacing every time her hands roughly squeezed his shoulders and rubbed the back of his neck. Finally, he could take no more and put his hand on one of hers. "I'm all right now. Sit and rest. Thank you."

Pansy sat beside him and took his left hand in hers. "No, thank _you_. I've never known anyone so gallant. Someone who would take _torture_ for me." The way she was gazing into his eyes was making him very uncomfortable but he wasn't certain how he could remove his hand from hers after his earlier profession of love. He wished he'd come up with another lie for why he was in the bedroom but the damage was done.

"To tell the truth," he said, lying, "I didn't know what it would feel like. That was much more—intense—than I ever—"

"I know!" she interrupted him. "But you stepped between me and the spell anyway!" she added, tears in her eyes. Percy couldn't look at her. He stared at the kitchen table.

"Anyway," he went on, "I'm very fortunate that Mrs Malfoy brought me back to Britain and gave me a job. I wasn't even certain that I was British when she found me in Gibraltar. Perhaps she doesn't use these housekeeping spells you mentioned so that I can have a job?"

"Oh, not Narcissa," Pansy said, sneering, the dislike for her boyfriend's mother evident in her voice. "She's never lifted a finger to do something like that in her _life_. Why do you think anything remotely valuable has been sold and the house is falling to bits? She doesn't even attempt to use spells to take care of that. There was a leak in the ceiling in my and Draco's bathroom and Draco had to cast the spell to keep the place from flooding. Of course, spells like that don't last, so he has to renew it every week, but she can't even be moved to do simple things like that. She's always had house-elves to do the work, even after Lucius went to pri—after her husband died," she amended, looking at him nervously.

"House-elves?" Percy said, realising abruptly that he should find this phrase odd. "Elves as in _elves_? Little magical creatures? Like—like leprechauns? The little mythical green men from Irish folk tales?" He hoped that he sounded convincingly new to the concept of elves.

"Oh, they're not mythical. Leprechauns, I mean. And no, house-elves and leprechauns don't have much in common except for being small. Otherwise they're quite different." She paused for a moment. "Hmm. I suppose there's no harm in talking to you about these things. It's not as though you're actually a Mug—I mean, it's not like the Ministry of Magic will find out that I've told you."

He forced himself to frown, remembering the days when he _worked_ for the Ministry. "There's a Ministry of Magic?"

"Oh, yes. At any rate, they'd probably be a lot crosser with me for protecting Draco than telling you about things you already—I mean, telling you about magical creatures like elves and leprechauns."

"Why would they be cross with you for protecting Draco? What are you protecting him from?" Percy remembered to ask, with wide-eyed innocence. She patted his arm patronisingly.

"Don't worry about that. Not to mention, I think I'm done protecting Draco. Especially after _that_. Torturing me!"

"Erm, Mr Zabini was the one who actually—"

"But he didn't _stop_ him, did he?" she spat indignantly. " _You're_ the one who leapt between me and the curse! He didn't do that either, for all that he claims he wants to marry me." She looked so miserable now that Percy felt a little sorry for her, wondering if Draco was using her or he simply suffered from a lack of physical courage and couldn't contemplate taking a curse for the woman he loved.

"There is something rather _odd_ ," Percy told her, speaking slowly, as though just now having these thoughts, rather than having been ruminating on the subject for some time. "Whenever I think about going outside—I don't. And if I'm late with lunch or make a mistake of any kind, I have this strange compulsion to try to shut my ears in the oven door or to iron my fingers. I even tried the oven door once but my ears aren't long enough."

She looked at him quizzically. "Hmm. That's not so odd, really. It sounds like they've put a servant spell on you. At least they let you wear _clothes_. Though perhaps that's _not_ such a good thing," she added with a smirk, running her free hand over Percy's forearm in a rough manner that he assumed was meant to be a caress. Instead she was making him want to retch at the thought of running about the Malfoy home in nothing but a loincloth made of an old pillowcase while Pansy Parkinson leered at him. Percy swallowed and tried to smile feebly at her as she went on: "And to think that I was once rather cross with Draco for wanting me to go out with him while he looked like you…"

She leaned toward him and Percy could tell that she was going to kiss him. He couldn't help himself—every bone in his body was telling him to run before she made contact and he fought this urge. He ended up standing beside his chair suddenly, pulling his hand away from hers, leaving her leaning forward, falling onto his vacated chair, her lips puckered expectantly.

"Erm, I'm sorry, Miss, but if I were to kiss you right now I feel that I would be taking gross advantage of you. You're obviously distraught over what happened and grateful to me for stepping in. That's probably what you're feeling right now: gratitude. It would be very wrong of me to try to capitalise on that. It's not why I tried to protect you, so you would want to thank me like this. I had n-no thought of reward."

Pansy sighed. "But that's _exactly_ why—" She stopped and frowned again. "You're as 'noble' as ever, aren't you? Even though you don't remember much of anything," she said, her mouth twisting. She said this as though pointing out a flaw. "Hmph! Should have known. Leopards don't change their spots." She sighed again. "Still, you did step in. Thanks for that."

"And I think—I know it's not my place, but I think that Mr Malfoy still has feelings for you. I think he was as shocked as anyone when Mr Zabini tortured you."

"Maybe," she said, looking unconvinced. "You know what Draco was saying to me last night, when we were in bed? He wishes that we could just run off to Gibraltar, the two of us, and live a peaceful life. None of this nonsense Blaise has been harping on."

Percy shrugged. "So, why don't you?"

Pansy looked up at him, smiling slightly. "Yes. Yes, why _don't_ we?" she said softly. Shaking herself, as though waking from a dream, she added, "That would mean getting Draco out of Blaise's clutches first. Of course, the Ministry usually reward people who give evidence against someone else. They could reward Draco for turning in Zabini, give him amnesty, let him leave the country and promise not to come back…" She smiled at Percy and he concentrated on gazing blankly back at her, as though he'd been memory charmed again. "You make an excellent point, Weatherby. _Why don't we_?"

Percy tried very hard not to whoop with glee. Pansy was coming round and he hadn't had to reveal to her that he knew he was a wizard and had stolen her wand. She would try to convince Draco to betray Blaise Zabini and run off to Gibraltar.

Despite what he knew Malfoy had done to more than one person in his family and that he deserved the life sentence he'd been serving in Azkaban, he was inclined to let him go, if it was up to him. The whole operation hadn't been his idea, that was Zabini. He was the one who'd broken Draco out of prison and had the idea to steal the children's power. Percy didn't much care what happened to Draco if he and Pansy helped bring Zabini to justice. Draco Malfoy had already served many years of his sentence. If he finally did something _right_ and helped send Blaise Zabini to prison, Draco and Pansy going free and running off to the good life in Gibraltar was definitely worth it.

Pansy stood and walked to the kitchen doorway. "Thank you again for what you did. And for—for not taking advantage of me and my gratitude. I didn't even realise, I think, that I was waiting for Draco all these years. I tried going out with other men, but, well, maybe this is our second chance. I don't really want to be the wife or girlfriend of a Dark Lor—" She sighed. "I mean—I just want to marry Draco and settle down and have a quiet life. Is that too much to ask?"

At that moment Percy felt a genuine affection and sympathy for Pansy. He smiled at her and shook his head. "No. It's not too much to ask. And I want you to be happy, so you can ask anything of me and I'll do it if it will help you to be happy. Remember that."

She looked shrewdly at him and nodded, her eyes narrowed in thought. "Yes, yes, I will. Thank you, Weatherby. I need to think a little about this and talk to Draco. But thank you."

She left the kitchen and Percy sat, sighing with relief. He'd done it. He hadn't meant to when he'd leapt between Pansy and the Cruciatus Curse, but he'd done it regardless. He was no longer alone in the house.

Pansy was on his side.

#/#/#

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	47. Good Cop, Bad Cop

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Forty-Seven**

 **Good Cop, Bad Cop**

 **#/#/#**

Harry and Hermione sat at Blaise Zabini's kitchen table across from Vincent Crabbe, who looked oddly small for someone who would have to turn sideways to fit through the doorway into Harry's old cupboard at his aunt and uncle's house—and he still might not have fit. Crabbe seemed shrunken, slouched in his chair, looking at Harry and Hermione nervously and swallowing. Harry almost felt sorry for him— _almost_ —before he remembered that he'd been working for the vile worm who had kidnapped his children.

He glared at Crabbe, though Crabbe looking cowed and abashed made it difficult for Harry to maintain his anger. "Where are my children and the other kids?" he demanded before he could lose his head of steam. He pounded the table and looked at Crabbe over the top of his glasses.

Hermione put her hand on his arm as if to calm him, but it was an act. She was no calmer than Harry. They'd all felt that sending in couples who _weren't_ married to each other to do the interrogations—Harry with Hermione and Neville with Ginny—would be the best approach, since Crabbe and Goyle might be more inclined to suspect married couples of playing games. Neither Ron nor Bill were rational enough at the moment to cope with interrogating the pair of Slytherins, rather than cursing them, and neither were their wives. Luna wanted to use mother's milk from Blibbering Humdingers as a natural Veritaserum and Fleur seemed to have completely forgotten that she could speak English and simply hurled a stream of rapid-fire, unintelligible French at everyone within hearing. Molly and Arthur were also livid, while Penelope was taking rather a long time fetching Severus. Shacklebolt was the only Auror who had come from the Ministry, as the others were already on assignment or observing the Easter holiday.

They quickly decided that involving Shacklebolt in the interrogations could frighten Crabbe and Goyle into muteness, so that left Harry, Ginny, Neville and Hermione. Kingsley had reluctantly agreed to allow the interrogations to proceed without his being present but was using Extendable Ears to listen from the other side of the door while Harry and Hermione carried on with Crabbe. Harry was supposed to be the tough one during the interview and Hermione would pretend to placate him, but she was so stiff and _clenched_ he wondered whether she'd hex Crabbe first and ask questions later. He didn't think she was in a much better state of mind than Ron or Bill, and that was saying something. After she'd had a good cry on Neville she seemed like she'd pulled herself together, but Harry still worried that she might snap at any moment.

Crabbe threw up his hands. "Wish I could tell you, but I can't. I ain't the Secret Keeper. That's Zabini."

"You wish you could tell me? Don't treat me like I'm stupid," Harry growled. He didn't look at Hermione, whose dark eyes blazed. He was starting to think _she_ should have been the tough one.

"Honest, it's true!" Crabbe looked around furtively. "Where's Greg?" he whispered, looking toward the door.

"Why?" Harry wanted to know, suspicious of tricks.

"The thing is—my heart ain't in it no more," he said quietly, looking toward the door again. "I mean, I never spent any time around little kids. Not even when I _was_ one. Not unless you count Greg and Draco. I mean other people's kids. They're—they're _fun_ ," he said even more quietly. "And they seem to like me," he said into the table, so that Harry had to bend over to catch his words. His face was very pink and Harry didn't get the impression that he was lying.

"Neville Longbottom is interrogating Goyle," Harry told him, his hostility ebbing. "He's an Auror now, remember. Hermione's husband. My wife is with him. He and Hermione," Harry said, nodding at her, "also have a daughter you kidnapped. Are the kids all right?"

Crabbe looked furtively back and forth between the two of them. "So far," he said, his voice shaking. "But I don't know for how long."

Hermione walked around the table and put her hand on his shoulder. Harry could see that she was shaking with nerves. "What do you mean, Vincent?" she asked quietly.

"Well, you know…" He couldn't look at her but stared fixedly at the table.

"Zabini and Malfoy plan to take the children's magical power and then kill them, isn't that right?" Harry said as stoically as he could, trying not to think about what this would mean.

Crabbe's eyes widened. "How'd you know that?" He swallowed and looked at Hermione. "There's a timing thing. It's supposed to work best at midnight on Easter for some reason."

"Must be the cycle of the moon," Hermione said, removing her hand from Crabbe's shoulder. "The date for Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox." Harry could see her hands shaking.

"There's an ideal cycle of the moon to steal children's magical power?" Harry asked.

Crabbe shrugged. "That's what the spellbook says. That's why I wish I could tell you where they are." He sniffled and wiped his nose with a swipe of his large, meaty hand. "Them kids don't deserve this. They haven't hurt no one…"

"Even someone who's hurt someone doesn't deserve—" Harry started to say, but then he thought of what Zabini and Malfoy deserved—in his opinion—and didn't finish.

"But it's hopeless," Crabbe said, leaning his elbows on the table and putting his head in his hands. "There's no getting around it. I can't tell you and Goyle can't tell you…"

Harry frowned at the table, wishing that Polyjuice Potion could fix the problem, like when he and Ron were in second year and had gained entrance to the Slytherin common room that way. Unfortunately, the Fidelius Charm didn't care what someone _looked_ like. They still needed to be taken there by someone who _knew_ or the Secret Keeper needed to tell them, and—

"Only Zabini can do that," Crabbe continued, as though continuing Harry's thoughts. "And all this was his idea, so he'd never—"

"You can do it," Harry said suddenly as an epiphany came over him. _We can't send in a fake Crabbe and Goyle, so what about the real thing?_ "You—you sound as if you're really sorry and want to help the kids. You _can_ help them. You're just about the only one. _We_ can't go in—but you can. You can rescue them and get them out again."

Hermione stared at him as though he'd gone mad. So did Crabbe. "Harry, are you serious?" Hermione wanted to know. "You'd let him go again? He's in custody! We can't just—"

"Hermione, we have to trust him. _We_ can't do it. There's no getting around the Fidelius Charm. This is the only way to get the kids back."

Crabbe looked rather nervous. "I'm—I'm not really—Zabini is very fast with his wand. And Draco's not bad. I was never very—you know. You expect me to take them on _by myself_? Couldn't I just—I—I think I can face prison—" Harry had never heard Crabbe's voice _squeak_ before. He looked quite nervous.

"You won't be alone. You've already got an ally in the house, you just didn't know it: Percy Weasley!" Hermione said, perking up suddenly when she thought of this.

Harry felt like throttling her. "Hermione! You've just blown Percy's cover!"

"He's got to know who's on his side!"

"You mean Weatherby?" Crabbe frowned at them both. "But—but he's got no memory of being a wizard. He just works as the butler. Don't know a thing. He don't even properly remember what went on when he was in school, even when he's been given Veritaserum. Well, okay, sometimes he does when he's had that—"

"It's been an act," Hermione told him cheerfully while Harry seethed. "He's the one who sent us a note written by Narcissa Malfoy herself that allowed us to enter this house, even though it was protected by the Fidelius Charm. Mrs Malfoy was the Secret Keeper and Percy tricked her into doing it."

Crabbe let out a long whistle, looking impressed. "He's good, that Weatherby. All right; that'll help, that will." He looked vaguely hopeful, as if he were no longer expecting to be hexed into a pile of dust by Malfoy and Zabini. "Won't he need a wand? I reckon I could take one to him…"

"He's got one already. So you'll do it?" Hermione asked excitedly, clapping her hands together.

"Wait a minute, Hermione," Harry said, shaking his head. "It was one thing for him to be going in by himself, but now you've given him Percy! He can tell Malfoy and Zabini about him and they'll _kill_ Percy!"

"I wouldn't do that!" Crabbe exclaimed, as though this would never cross the mind of a Malfoy minion. "I really _don't_ want the kids hurt."

Harry wished he'd never suggested sending Crabbe in but he didn't know how else they were going to get to the kids in time. Hermione waved her wand and conjured up a curling parchment, a quill and a bottle of ink. "Do you remember a girl in school called Marietta Edgecombe?" Hermione asked Crabbe slyly, looking at Harry with one brow raised.

"I reckon. Wasn't she that girl who had SPY written across her face in purple pimples?"

"It was SNEAK, and do you remember the reason that the spots were there?" Hermione asked him, her arms crossed.

Crabbe bowed his head again. "You did that to her because she grassed on you and the others in that Dumbledore's Army thing."

"Which was how you and your little friends in the Inquisitorial Squad knew where to find us," Harry added bitterly, worried more than ever that the situation was hopeless. He remembered the ruthlessness of Crabbe, Goyle, Malfoy and Parkinson during the 'raid' and wondered what he could have been thinking to trust Crabbe.

Hermione waved her wand over the parchment she'd conjured and said to Crabbe, "Do you see what's written on this parchment? Read it."

Crabbe struggled through it. "I, Vincent Crabbe, p-promise to do everything in my p-power to bring the k-kidnapped children and Percy W-weasley safely b-back to their famblies—erm, families. If I betray their trust my—" His eyes went wide and he looked up at Hermione. "It'll—it'll just _drop off_?"

She nodded, tapping the parchment with her wand. "Only if you turn on us or reveal the truth about Percy to Malfoy or Zabini or anyone not on our side. If you're trustworthy there should be no problem. We're not sending you in unless you sign this. Then we'll know you're serious, because you won't want to risk _that_ happening," she said, tapping the parchment again.

Harry was shocked when Crabbe nodded and swallowed, pulling the parchment toward him and grasping the quill sitting in the conjured pot of ink, sloppily signing his name. Harry pulled Hermione aside and hissed at her, "Are you mad? Do you honestly think it would make any difference?"

"What?" she hissed back.

"Well, isn't he practically a eunuch? Why should he care if he doesn't have the equipment?"

Raising her brows, Hermione whispered, "Aren't you being a bit presumptuous? No one thought _you'd_ been up to anything when you were sixteen, then your son turns up twelve years later…"

"I _wasn't_ up to anything when I was sixteen," Harry whispered through gritted teeth. _Unfortunately,_ he thought. "Well, maybe a little snogging, but I wasn't up to _shagging_ when I was sixteen." He explained to her about going to Parvati and seeing his adult self in Tilda's bedroom doorway.

"So _that's_ why you were asking me about Time-Turners? Great Merlin! Well, then we all _thought_ that you and Ginny _were_ getting up to something and it turned out that you weren't until your wedding had nearly arrived, so you can't assume."

"Can we leave my sex life out of this, please?" Harry grumbled, before he was tempted to throw her cheating on Neville with Ron in her face. "We were talking about whether this is an effective threat to _him_."

She smirked. "He cares, you heard him. He still has hope, like all men. Don't underestimate that. Anyway, it won't happen."

"You're so confident that he won't betray us?"

"Yes. I think he genuinely wants to help and it's given him a bit of confidence to know that Percy's in on it. But it won't happen because there's no charm on the parchment," she added, dropping her voice so that it was even softer. "I didn't have time. It's just words. But _he_ believes it'll happen if he betrays us, that's the important thing. He knows about Marietta and thinks I'm capable of doing something like that again, so let's let him _believe_ I am." Hermione's eyes glinted with mischief. Harry shook his head ruefully.

"Ron and I were definitely a bad influence on you."

#/#/#

Blaise Zabini closed the dining room door and paced, fuming. "Do we still have extra-strong Veritaserum?" he barked at no one in particular.

Draco answered. "No. Used up the last of the lot at least a fortnight ago. You want to use some on Pansy?" He frowned, wondering why they should bother. But then he turned to his mother. "Wait a minute," he started to say, observing his mother's satisfaction concerning Pansy. "You can't stand Pansy, Mother! I'll bet you've just been waiting for the chance to set her up!"

His mother scowled and then laughed. "Don't be ridiculous, Draco! She clearly—"

But now Zabini had turned and was scrutinising her as well. "Yes, Narcissa, there _is_ something I've been wondering about. You're my Secret Keeper and _someone_ told that secret to Potter and Weasley and the rest. _Pansy_ couldn't have done it, unless she managed to _trick_ you into writing that note. So, Narcissa, have you betrayed us all because you're jealous of your son showing attention to Pansy Parkinson or did little Pansy _trick_ you into writing the note?"

"That blithering idiot!" Narcissa exclaimed. "She couldn't trick a—" she started to say. When she realised what her words sounded like a panicked look came over her and she changed tactics. "What I meant is—"

" _Stupefy!_ " Draco cried, pointing his wand at his mother and watching listlessly as she started to fall over, ending up at an odd angle, stiffly leaning against one of the tall-backed chairs around the long table. He pocketed his wand.

Blaise shook his head, looking at her with his mouth in a line. "Women," he said simply before turning to Draco. "All right, we obviously don't need Veritaserum. You _do_ have more Polyjuice with Weasley's hair in it, yeah? Drink a little more and take that food tray he made to the drawing room. We won't be starting the power transfer until the stroke of midnight, so we have time to get to the bottom of this." He glared at Narcissa again. "She could have been the consort of the next great Dark Lord…"

" _Mother_ , you mean," Draco said, giving Blaise a sharp look.

"Well, yeah, you call her _Mother_ , of course."

"No, you meant to say 'mother of the next great Dark Lord'— _right_?" Draco bristled, moving his hand slowly toward the pocket where he kept his wand.

Blaise froze. "Yes, of course," he said mechanically, a stiff smile appearing on his face suddenly. "The mother of the next great Dark Lord. That's what I said."

Draco looked at Blaise through narrowed eyes. Had he heard wrong? _Had_ Zabini said 'mother' or 'consort'? If his mother _had_ told the secret, could it have been Zabini himself who'd tricked her into doing it, to cast suspicion on Pansy? They would expect Draco to defend her, of course, thereby disposing of both of them and leaving the way clear for _him_ to be the next great Dark Lord. Had Zabini _ever_ been planning to make _Draco_ a Dark Lord or was Draco just being used?

"The food. For the kids," Blaise reminded him tersely, turning to leave. Narcissa was still tilted stiffly against the chair, her fair hair hanging in her face. Her lover seemed neither to notice nor care.

Draco took the Polyjuice Potion. As he waited for the change to come over him, his mind raced. _Why am I even here? Not because my mum broke me out of prison. Because Zabini did. But why did he? If someone has an idea for a way to become great and powerful why would he decide to make someone else great and powerful instead? Why not use that power yourself?_

He glanced at his mother after the potion had taken effect. Zabini had come to her and offered to get her son back for her. And it wasn't in exchange for being in her bed. There was more at work here.

Draco left his mother where she was, leaning at roughly a thirty-degree angle, like an abandoned broom. He carried the tray to the drawing room and levitated it while he unlocked the door and pushed it open slightly. Grasping the handles of the tray while it still hung in mid-air, he backed into the room and closed the door with his foot.

Most of the children were sitting beside the sofa on the remaining oriental rug that his mother hadn't sold. He knew a couple of reasons _why_ she hadn't sold that rug and was glad that she still had a little sense. They looked up when he appeared with the food and Nate in particular bounded over to him like a puppy.

"Dad! There you are! Wondered what happened to you. How soon can we get out of here?"

#/#/#

Nate's dad was very pale beneath the scattered freckles across his nose, which gave him an oddly youthful look, as though he were still Head Boy at Hogwarts. He drew his mouth into a firm line and put the tray on the floor.

"You'll get out of here when we've decided that everything is all right. Let the adults deal with the details, Nate," he said brusquely before turning toward the door again.

"Dad!" Nate called, running to him. "At least tell us what happened to those two wizards who were—"

"They were arrested. Just keep an eye on the younger kids and wait until I come back," his father barked at him, opening and closing the door very quickly. Nate immediately tried to open it but it had been locked again and wouldn't budge.

"They got to him." Teddy couldn't help the words escaping him. He'd been feeling uneasy and suspicious ever since Percy had 'rescued' them and now that he'd reappeared Teddy didn't feel any better about the situation.

"Stop saying that," Nate growled at his best friend. "He wouldn't—he couldn't _do_ that…"

"Then why are we still in here if he's not working with them?" Teddy demanded.

He'd been trying to convince Nate that there was something wrong with his dad after he'd left them waiting for so long, locked up in another ornate drawing room, though this one had clearly fallen on hard times. Nate didn't want to hear it and they had both lapsed into a hostile silence until Percy had returned. So Teddy had set about investigating their new prison.

No one had locked or shuttered the room's tall windows, but in this house the drawing room wasn't on the ground floor. There was at least a twenty foot drop to a stone terrace that looked quite unforgiving. It was scattered with uncomfortable-looking stone benches and spiky plants in large stone pots, no grass that could offer even a semi-soft landing. There were no curtains at the tall windows nor anything else that could be used to fashion a means of escape, so even though they weren't as thoroughly locked up as they'd been in the other house they were still trapped. They couldn't even hail anyone outdoors, as they might have done in the city, if they could have opened the windows there, since the view across the desolate landscape was persistently flat and unpopulated except by neglected topiaries. The 'park' was bordered by what seemed to be a forest. Scrubby grass stretched to the treeline. The fact that they were in a grand, if crumbling, manor house on an extensive estate was not comforting. The lack of people was the main problem, from Teddy's view.

"I don't know why we're still here," Nate admitted grudgingly. "But whatever the reason, it's not my dad's fault!"

Teddy was about to ask him how he could be so sure about that but stopped himself when he saw the look on Nate's face. He was as unsure as Teddy. Glancing around the room, Teddy thought about the shabbiness of the place and how elegant it must have been. Then he remembered that he'd worked out that their captors were Crabbe and Goyle.

"Nate, I've just thought of something," he said slowly, still staring around at the peeling gilt and dark, unfaded patches of wallpaper where art must have hung. "Those two goons who were at the other house—they were the best mates of Draco Malfoy when they were all in school. My dad told me. Maybe this is _his_ house."

Nate frowned. "Hasn't he been in prison for years? Anyway, his mum helped my dad come back from Gibraltar. If we're in her house, maybe it's part of the holiday celebration."

Teddy stared around. "Mrs Malfoy doesn't have much to celebrate, if you ask me." He looked levelly at Nate. "Maybe she asked your dad for payment for helping him out and _this_ is it."

Nate fumed, his hands forming into fists by his sides. "I _said_ to stop saying that! My dad's not kidnapping us! He's not—"

"—interested in your mum anymore," Teddy said, feeling awful, but determined to get Nate to face the truth. "Nate, come on! You've been telling me how disappointed you've been that your mum and dad haven't really got back together. What if he's with Mrs Malfoy instead and she asked him to do something for her? I mean, this place is pretty bad. Hasn't been properly kept up in a long time, by the look of it." He kicked at the leg of the sofa. Stuffing was starting to emerge from a couple of rips on the arms where the damask fabric had worn very thin.

Nate rushed at him and pushed against his chest hard, with both hands, and Teddy could see that there were tears in his eyes now that his best friend was so close. "Shut up! Shut up! He's not, he's not…" Nate insisted, his teeth gritted.

Teddy staggered back under the sudden attack while Ruby and Rory took their cousin's arms and pulled him away from their brother. Nate continued to mumble, " _Shut up, shut up_ ," as the twins held firmly onto his arms. Despite Nate being the tallest he was painfully thin. Teddy had been surprised that he'd managed to push with much force at all. He knew how bony Nate's arms were, though he evidently had a wiry strength when he was angry enough to use it. Teddy could see that Ruby and Rory were straining to keep Nate in check until he decided to stand down.

"It may not be him."

Teddy, Nate and the twins turned in surprise at the soft voice. Marguerite sat gracefully on the carpet, Charlotte and Diana beside her, running their small hands delightedly through her fine, cornsilk hair while Frances bounced in her lap. The little boys—Julian and the three sons of Ron and Luna—were running around the far end of the room, playing tag.

"What did you say?" Teddy asked her, something familiar prickling at the back of his brain.

"It may not be our Uncle Percy," she said calmly in that oddly musical voice of hers. "I heard my parents talking about how different he has been ever since returning from Gibraltar. My father said that he understood that his brother has probably not recovered all of his memories, but he has talked to him a great deal and Uncle Percy has said some very odd things."

"Your dad thought he was an imposter but didn't say or do anything?" Teddy demanded.

"He never said his brother was an imposter. But he said that there was something 'off' about him. I do not think it occurred to him that his brother might not _be_ his brother. I am the one suggesting this. Either that or he is cursed."

Nate, Teddy and the twins stared at each other and said, " _Imperius_ ," as one. They'd all heard numerous tales from Harry and Ginny about people being placed under Imperius.

"But I do not think he is cursed. My father discussed that with my mother too, and they both ruled it out. He encountered many people who were cursed when he was in the Order of the Phoenix and when my mother was in the Triwizard Tournament she said that Viktor Krum was placed under Imperius. Uncle Percy's behaviour is not consistent with that, they said."

Nate swallowed. "So, if he's an imposter, that means I might not have met my real father. Still." He stared into space and Teddy wondered how he'd feel if he'd met Harry—and then learned that it wasn't Harry at all.

"We don't know that," Teddy said quietly, but stopped when he saw Nate's distress, realising that it would be far more comforting to Nate not to have a dad at all rather than one who could turn on his own son and nieces and nephews. Teddy kicked the sofa again impatiently. "Damn! I wish I had my wand. At least I could conjure a Patronus to send a message to Harry and Ginny."

"A Patronus? You can conjure a Patronus?" Marguerite asked, looking impressed.

"Yeah," Teddy said, his face growing hot. "My dad said that he learned when he was in his third year so he gave me some private lessons last year and I got pretty good at it. He also told me how to use one to send secure messages to people. He didn't learn that when he was in school but he wished he had. If he'd been able to do that when he was in his fifth year, he said, a lot of bad things might not have happened." However, in that none of them had a wand, they all quieted and stared helplessly at each other.

"What do we do now?" Ruby asked. "We can't just stay here and wait for whoever brought us here to do something nasty to us."

Rory scoffed at her sister. "In case you hadn't noticed, Teddy and Nate don't have their wands, you, me and Marguerite don't have wands, there are no brooms conveniently lying around, and we probably can't even eat the food, since the last time we did it was drugged."

"Not true," Teddy said quickly. "At the other house the food Crabbe and Goyle gave us was fine." They all looked suspiciously at the tray sitting on the floor. "Of course, that doesn't mean that this food is fine. We won't know without letting someone test it first."

Just then, Julian ran to Nate and asked, "What's going on?"

"We need someone to test the food, to see if it's drugged," Ruby told him.

Without batting an eye, Julian replied, "Okay. I'm hot from running around. I'll do it."

"No!" Nate cried, grabbing his brother's arm.

"What's wrong with you?" Julian demanded, pulling his arm away. "Ruby just said that someone needs to test it."

"Let him try it, Nate," Rory said in a placating tone. "Better than all of us being knocked out again, and if it's all right then everyone can have something to eat. At least they're feeding us."

"The question is— _why_?" Teddy said quietly, watching Julian sit on the carpet and reach for a toasted cheese sandwich. "Why are we here at all? What are they playing at?"

Ruby looked around the shabby room again. "Well, as you pointed out, this place is falling apart. I would guess that they want to ask for a big ransom for all of us. They certainly need the money, by the look of things."

"But that's stupid," Teddy countered, "when we can tell our parents where we've been and what we've seen. They'd never get away with it. And that other house we were in looked fine."

"If they memory-charm us they could get away with it," Rory said, hungrily eyeing the food as Julian stuffed another sandwich into his mouth.

"Or if they weren't planning to give us back at all," Marguerite said quietly, brushing her hand over Frances's soft curls. She met Teddy's eye for a moment and he shivered, wondering whether even a one-eighth veela had special powers. He also wished she hadn't said this, though he'd been thinking it for some time.

"I don't know," Nate said, frowning. "If they were going to kill us you'd think they'd have done it by now."

"I think she meant that instead of giving us back after getting the ransom they might be planning to kill us," Ruby explained calmly, joining Julian on the carpet and picking up a sandwich. She leaned to one side, her hand supporting her weight as she bit into the bread and cried out, "Ouch!"

Teddy went to his sister's side. "What is it? What's wrong? Something in the sandwich?"

Ruby pulled her hand up from the carpet abruptly, continuing to chew. "No, you eejit," she said thickly, her mouth full. She quickly chewed and swallowed. "I hit a—a thing with my hand. There's something under here."

Teddy ran his hand over the threadbare carpet and felt the sharp, jagged piece of metal that had made Ruby cry out. His mind racing, he cried out, "Everyone off the carpet!" The others scrambled to pick up the tray and the babies, moving to the bare wood floor while Teddy and Nate moved the sofa out of the way and rolled back the carpet.

"A trap door," Nate whispered in awe when they had laid bare the dark patch of floor that had been covered by the carpet. Teddy crouched and ran his hands over the rusty hinges. Ruby had put her hand on a screw that had begun to work its way loose from one of them. A splintery hole large enough for a man's hand was on the opposite side from the hinges and Teddy couldn't resist the temptation to put his hand through the hole, grasp the splintery wood and lift.

"Keep the babies away," he said quickly to Marguerite and his sisters, who each grabbed one of the little girls. Julian and the other little boys watched, awestruck, as Nate helped him to lift the heavy wood door, which they dropped as quietly as they could on the rolled-up carpet behind the opening. A slimy-looking set of stone steps descended steeply into the darkness and stone walls were on either side. It was impossible to see where the steps went.

"Could be a way out," Rory said quietly as she held the squirming Charlotte tightly.

"Or," Ruby said, pausing ominously, "the way to the torture chamber or underground tomb where they plan to take us and kill us slowly and painfully."

Teddy glared at her murderously and Nate cried out, "Ruby!" She widened her eyes and shrugged.

"What? I'm just saying what everyone else is thinking."

"All right," Teddy said slowly, "who's going in?"

The other children looked at him as if he were mad. "In?" Nate said, his voice squeaking. "In there?"

"We need to find out where the passage goes," Teddy said, trying to sound reasonable. "All right, I'll go in—"

"Don't be stupid," Ruby said dismissively. "If they come in they'll notice you missing straight away. I should go. Rory can just run around and make it seem like there are two of her if they come to check on us."

"Well, you can't go alone. There should be two, at least," Teddy countered.

"Probably not more than two, or they'll notice the difference," Nate said reasonably.

"And if your dad comes back, he'll notice you missing as well." Teddy frowned, thinking hard, but unwilling to volunteer someone else to go. There weren't many other people he could see going, other than one of the little boys, and he didn't want to volunteer either Ron's sons or Julian.

"I should go," Marguerite said suddenly. Everyone turned to stare at her.

"You?" Teddy said hollowly.

"Yes. We'll need some light, after all," Marguerite said calmly, as though this made sense.

Teddy looked up at the candles mounted high on the walls, and at the chandelier hanging above the centre of the room, which had to have at least four dozen candles. "Well, if we can work out a way to light one of these and a way to get it down, you can carry a candle into the tunnel—"

"No need," Marguerite informed him before she snapped her fingers and a small ball of fire that evidently did not burn her appeared in her right hand, blazing brightly and casting a golden glow on their faces. Marguerite looked like she was trying not to smile at Teddy's shocked expression. "It's a veela thing," she explained simply.

Turning to Ruby, she said, "Ready?"

Ruby nodded and followed Marguerite down the stairs, which did not look more inviting for the glow of the magical ball of light in Marguerite's palm.

"Be careful!" Teddy told them unnecessarily.

"Close the trapdoor and roll the carpet back where it was!" Ruby called from the foot of the stairs. "We'll wait for you to open it again before coming up. We won't knock in case one of _them_ is in there. Open it up again in—twenty minutes. Okay?"

Twenty minutes sounded like an eternity to Teddy, but he nodded grimly at his sister and step-cousin, watching the glow move away into the darkness of the mysterious tunnel.

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	48. Honour Among Thieves

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Forty-Eight**

 **Honour Among Thieves**

 **#/#/#**

Harry looked around at the others gathered in Blaise Zabini's drawing room and took a deep breath. "We have good news and bad news. The good news is that Crabbe and Goyle are on our side and don't want to see the kids hurt."

"Both of them?" Ron said, frowning sceptically.

"Yes," Neville said, nodding. "After Ginny and I were done talking to Goyle in the dining room Shacklebolt helped us take him down to the kitchen so we could talk to Harry and Hermione. Crabbe's the same."

"He really likes the kids," Hermione said, her voice shaking as Neville put his arm around her shoulders. "He doesn't want to help Malfoy hurt them."

"How is that good news? They aren't in the house to keep Malfoy from hurting them, so what's the point?" Ron demanded. Arthur put a gentle hand on his arm.

"What's the bad news?" Arthur asked quietly, glancing at Molly, who stood between Severus and Penelope, near the mantel. Penelope and Severus had just arrived on the Knight Bus with Tilda, who sat on the couch beside Luna, looking pale and drawn. She wasn't supposed to have come but Severus couldn't convince her not to, so they'd had to take the bus once leaving the Isle of Wight. Luna patted Tilda's hand consolingly, though she looked quite pale herself. Fleur sat on Luna's other side, her eyes blazing as she teetered on the edge of her seat, Bill standing by her side.

"Why are we seeting 'ere?" she demanded. "Deed they tell you where ze children are or not?"

"I was about to explain the bad news," Harry said, trying to be patient. "Wherever the kids are, it's protected by the Fidelius Charm, like this house was. Or still is, I reckon, except that all of us know the secret now, so we were able to come here. But neither Crabbe nor Goyle is the Secret Keeper at the other house, so we still don't know where the kids are."

"You're joking," Penelope said, pacing the hearth rug nervously. "They're at Draco Malfoy's house, obviously! It _should_ be obvious, at any rate. Who needs to be told a secret when we can just guess the answer? Percy didn't say that clearly in the letter, but he said he was working for Narcissa Malfoy. Where else would he be doing that? The only reason he couldn't write it himself is that he's not the Secret Keeper. Honestly! We know where they are, so what are we waiting for?"

Fleur sprang to her feet, her hair whipping about her head, hitting Hermione in the face as Fleur pushed past her to grasp Harry's arm with a surprisingly strong hand. "Zen we must go to get zem!" she declared while Hermione sputtered and tried to get long blonde strands of hair out of her mouth.

Ron enthusiastically strode across the room to join Fleur and Harry. "Okay!" he said loudly, clapping his hands together. "Fleur's right! What are we waiting for?"

Hermione glanced at Luna before scowling at Ron. "What are we waiting for? I don't know, for the sun to set in the north and the moon to fly out of your arse?" she said acidly. "You seem to have forgotten that that's not how the Fidelius Charm works."

Fleur glared at Hermione angrily. "Don't be absurd. We merely need to go to ze house and retrieve ze children. Zere must be a record at ze Ministry of where ze house eez."

Arthur shrugged. "We don't need the Ministry for that. I could Apparate to the village where the Malfoys live in my sleep, I went on so many raids there. But just knowing where the house is won't do any good, my dear."

Fleur looked at her father-in-law more kindly than she had at Hermione. Arthur had the unique attribute, amongst the members of the Weasley family, of neither being held in contempt by Fleur nor subject to her considerable charms, as most of his sons were, married to her or not.

"Why won't it do any good?" she asked more calmly.

"It's as Hermione said. That's now how the Fidelius Charm works." Harry could see that Hermione was itching to give the explanation but a look from Arthur quelled her and he went on. "We could go to the Malfoy house and press our noses against the windows—"

"—and we wouldn't see a thing," Harry said hollowly. His eyes met Arthur's and he grimaced. "Sorry to interrupt. That's what I remember McGonagall, Flitwick and Hagrid saying when we overhead them talking about the Fidelius Charm that had been protecting my parents'—my house. They said Voldemort could be right there, looking in the windows, but it wouldn't matter if he hadn't been told the Secret."

"Precisely," Arthur said, putting his arm around Fleur's shoulders and giving her a sympathetic squeeze.

"Which is why," Harry said slowly, looking around nervously, "we've talked to Crabbe and Goyle about going back in as our spies, to save the children."

Those who hadn't been speaking to the prisoners stared at Harry, Ginny, Neville and Hermione as though they'd gone mad. Ron started laughing, in a way. It sounded more like choking. "You've got to be kidding! Why should we trust _them_? We're going to send our two prisoners back and believe that they're going to try to rescue the kids?"

"And even if they are really on our side," Bill said, frowning; "how in Merlin's name are they supposed to overcome Draco Malfoy and Blaise Zabini and Narcissa Malfoy—"

"—and Pansy. She's there, too, though Percy has her wand now," Hermione added with a shudder. She looked at Harry, her expression saying, _We didn't think this through._

Harry sighed, running his hand through his hair. "That's what Crabbe was worried about too, Bill. Their wand-work was never exactly brilliant when they were in school."

"Having incompetents on the other side isn't a bad thing. Good intentions aside, incompetents on _our_ side could be worse. Neither of them can even Apparate," Neville groaned, sitting on a footstool and putting his head in his hands, as if he were also sorry he'd agreed to the plan.

Ginny's mouth twisted. "Plus, they'll have to explain how they somehow managed to overcome all of _us_ to escape. Malfoy will never buy that," she said softly, chewing on a thumbnail as she always did when she was trying to work out a problem.

"They'll be spotted as spies right away," Neville agreed, head still in his hands so that his words were muffled.

"There has to be a good reason for them to go back," Hermione said, frowning fiercely and pacing the hearth rug.

"A hostage," Luna said softly from the couch. Everyone turned to look at her. She shrugged. "If someone went as their hostage, that could do it. They can say that they escaped with a hostage."

"I'll do it," Harry said right away. Ron made a scoffing noise.

"Are you mad? Malfoy would kill you on sight. Once Crabbe and Goyle are back they don't need you to stay alive. And how are they to get Malfoy to believe that they overpowered _you_?" Ginny grasped Harry's arm possessively, nodding her agreement with her brother.

Neville stood and said, in a very official voice, "I'm an Auror. It should be me."

Ron snorted again. "I think Draco Malfoy would get even more pleasure out of killing you, and killing Harry would make his _life_. Not you either, Hermione," he added. "It can't be anyone he hates or he'll just kill them as soon as look at them. And it can't be anyone Malfoy knows could take Crabbe and Goyle blindfolded."

"Me. It has to be me." Everyone turned to look at Penelope. Severus appeared to be very cross. "Don't look at me like that, Severus! Yes, I know he did a despicable thing to masquerade as Percy, but that's why it needs to be me! He may have a bit of a soft spot for me. I doubt he'd kill me as soon as look at me. The rest of you—well, why should he want to let any of _you_ live? We've got to play the odds here. Plus, he doesn't think of me as a threat, magically. He knows that I've been living as a Muggle for years, so he probably thinks I'm out of practice when it comes to magic. And another thing," she added, "I won't be a hostage. I'll be a _traitor_."

When Penelope explained her plan everyone but Severus looked as if they were satisfied with it. He frowned deeply, his hands in his pockets, staring at the carpet, while Tilda glowered at Penelope. Harry wasn't happy about the plan either. "Are you certain about this, Penny? There's no guarantee that Malfoy won't kill _you_ , either. I'd feel a lot better if you let me go in. I could use one of your hairs and put it in some Polyjuice Potion so they _think_ I'm you."

Neville looked up, surprised. "Polyjuice Potion? You've got Polyjuice Potion on hand, Harry?" he said hopefully. "I didn't know that. Is it because you and Ginny teach Defence?"

"Erm, no, Neville," Harry sputtered. "I—I assumed that the Ministry would have some on hand. For Aurors."

Neville looked at him as though he was mad. "No offence, Harry, but you're _not_ an Auror. Yeah, you're Harry Potter and all, but the Ministry doesn't just give out Polyjuice to anyone who asks for it, even if you've had a year of Auror training. I could probably get some, but frankly, I think Penelope's right. It has to be her. We don't know how long any of this will take. If I take the potion and it wears off, I can't very well help Crabbe and Goyle get the kids out. I'll be dead. And I could be dead well before the potion wears off if Malfoy asks Penelope about something that happened between them, something only she would know. There's too much ground to cover. She can't tell me everything I would need to know, nor could she tell you. We haven't time."

Ginny nodded. "Yes. Goyle told us that Malfoy will want to do the spell to take the kids' magic tonight. He'll start a ritual at midnight. We're working against the clock." She put her hand on Harry's arm. "We'll still go to the Malfoy estate. We can wait nearby, so when they get the kids out of the house and they're no longer protected by the Fidelius Charm we can take them to safety. But only Crabbe and Goyle can get into the house, and only Penelope could pass as the traitor who helped them escape without Draco Malfoy killing her on sight. Probably," she added, looking hopefully at Penelope. "You're certain about this, Penny? You could still be in great danger. You'll _probably_ be in great danger."

Penelope looked rueful. "Draco Malfoy could have hurt me any number of times since he's been pretending to be Percy. I've been thinking a lot about it and I believe that the reason he's been distancing himself from me a bit is because he was starting to care a little and Pansy Parkinson didn't like it. Once I could have sworn he _called_ me 'Pansy' instead of 'Penny'. It was close enough that he insisted he'd said my name. I have to assume that if he's concerned about being faithful to his girlfriend, even though he's escaped from prison and is part of a conspiracy to kidnap our children, there might be _some_ hope for him."

"At that rate," Hermione said, frowning, "there's a danger that _Pansy_ could try to kill you."

Penelope gave Hermione a small smile. "Then it's a lucky thing that Percy has her wand, isn't it?"

She looked round at everyone and Harry saw her hands shaking as she folded her arms across her chest, trying to look cool and unflappable. "It's settled. I'm going in. I've got a good cover story: I'm a mother. If my boys are going to be killed I want to see them one last time, even if it means being killed myself," she said softly, a small choke in her voice.

Harry suddenly felt that his own throat had tightened considerably. "Yes," he said to her quietly. "That's what a mother would do," he added, remembering the first time he'd heard his own mother's voice asking Voldemort to kill her instead of him, offering up her life, unable to step aside and watch her child die without doing something.

"Penelope," Severus started to say.

"No. The discussion is over," Penelope said in a hard voice, staring at the carpet. She wouldn't look at him. Harry couldn't help thinking that he probably wanted to be the one to go in, but if Malfoy was _likely_ to kill Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, or Ginny on sight he was _certain_ to kill Severus Snape. Bill, Fleur or Luna wouldn't work either, because of their connection to Ron, which also eliminated Molly and Arthur. For the first time Harry could almost picture Severus Snape and Penelope Clearwater as a couple, which he'd never _tried_ to picture before, even once he knew about Julian Snape, but that was because he tried to avoid disturbing mental images whenever possible.

They went over the story of Penelope's betrayal of the others in extreme detail, though to Harry it seemed very rushed. They had no choice. She and Crabbe and Goyle needed to return to the Malfoys' in time to rescue the children, before the midnight ritual began and any of them lost their magical power, let alone their lives.

"What about me?" Tilda asked suddenly. "What am I to do? I assume that I'm not being permitted to come to Wiltshire to wait outside the house, as I'm not a witch," she grumbled, crossing her arms.

Harry looked pleadingly at Molly. "Molly will take you back to their house, won't you? You're not going to be waiting at the Malfoys', are you?" he said to his mother-in-law, raising his eyebrows.

Molly's mouth was twisting rebelliously but Arthur patted Tilda on the arm and quickly jumped in. "That's right, my dear. You go back to The Burrow with Molly. Let the others take care of this. Neville, Harry, Bill and Severus know what they're doing, and so do Fleur, Hermione, Luna and Ginny. I won't be fighting either, I expect; I just need to show everyone how to get there. And Shacklebolt will be going as well."

Ron cleared his throat meaningfully and Fleur rolled her eyes. "Oui, and ze _reportaire_ is _so much more_ experienced zan an Auror and two Charm Breakers and two Defence Against ze Dark Arts professors, and—"

"You'd be surprised," Hermione said stoutly, partly to Fleur and partly to Arthur. "He gets a lot of people refusing to be interviewed and reacting a bit violently, to say nothing of the reactions of people he _has_ written about."

Fleur's pale brows flew up and she eyed Ron with amusement. "Did you get a new wife and neglect to tell ze family?" Fleur insinuated. Harry saw Ron swallow and look away from her, his face furious.

"Okay," Harry said a little too loudly, "Molly will need to take Tilda back to The Burrow while Arthur comes with us," Harry said to his father-in-law, "since we can't risk anyone seeing us with Crabbe, Goyle, and Penelope. They should take the Knight Bus. We'll have to go separately."

"I usually Apparated to the courtyard of the Green Dragon in Alderbury and had a broom with me to fly north to Clarendon," Arthur said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "The Green Dragon is a Ministry-approved safe Apparition point. No danger of Muggles seeing."

"The town of Clarendon? Is that where the house is?" Hermione asked.

"No, Clarendon _is_ the house. That's its name. Used to be Clarendon Palace but the Malfoys moved it years ago. That's why almost nothing is left of it where it used to be. Muggles think it tumbled down. It was just moved, magically. The Malfoys have always been very powerful in Wiltshire. The first one to come to this country was William the Conquerer's court wizard, and a Malfoy was also very tight with the Plantagenets. Not sure when they got tired of working for Muggles," he said softly, frowning, "but that's probably at the heart of the Malfoy anti-Muggle feeling. Could be why they simply made off with the palace and turned it into the Malfoy home." Arthur sat wearily on the arm of the sofa. "The house is actually _in_ Clarendon Forest itself, surrounded by a large park that's edged with anti-Muggle charms." Suddenly looking like he'd forgotten something, Arthur added, "And we need to be careful at the Green Dragon. It's owned by an old friend of the Malfoys, Septimus Flint. We need to hope that he stays inside and doesn't happen to be wandering into his courtyard. Don't know if he or his son are in on this with Malfoy, but you never can tell."

"Flint!" Ron exclaimed. "As in Marcus?"

"That's the one. Septimus is Marcus's father. Lucius Malfoy's old haunt, that pub. The wizarding half of it, anyway. It can't be seen behind the Muggle pub of the same name. At any rate, a lot of us at the Ministry used to speculate that Lucius named his son after his favourite pub, just to make his wife cross. I shouldn't be surprised. We'll Apparate to the courtyard behind the pub, take brooms with us, and then fly north. It's a little hard to spot the house if you don't know what you're doing."

"Is it Unplottable?" Harry wanted to know.

"Probably. Which is why we have to do it this way. Can't Apparate to a place that's Unplottable unless you've got a sort of password for getting around that, but you can fly there if you know what you're doing. It takes skill not to be fooled by the shifting landscape. It'll look like it's moving about a bit as we get closer, like. As if it's not sure where it belongs. We'll land nearby and walk the last stretch. Otherwise we could overshoot, because of the Unplottable spell." He sighed. "I'm remembering now why it was always such a bloody chore to raid the Malfoys."

"And we'll have to use Disillusionment Charms when we fly, so Muggles won't see us," Hermione said grimly, looking a bit pale. Harry knew she'd been very glad to get her Apparition licence, as she'd never liked flying much.

"And Crabbe and Goyle and I actually have to get the kids out of the house," Penelope said weakly, looking even paler than Hermione.

"We need to work on their story with them," Harry said, nodding, wondering how well the two Slytherins would be able to remember what they had to do.

"It'll work. It's a good plan," Luna said calmly. "We've finally got hope." Everyone looked at her when she spoke but no one dared to agree or disagree.

 _Yes,_ Harry thought, looking around at the others. _We need all the bloody hope in the world._

#/#/#

Teddy and Nate closed the trap door together and the other children helped them to roll the carpet flat once more, after which they all sat down to eat the evidently drug-free food. The sandwiches disappeared all too quickly and Teddy realised, too late, that they should have saved some for Ruby and Marguerite. The other children were yawning and beginning to tire, stretching out on the carpet, which was the only real comfort the room offered other than a small horsehair footstool and the old sofa, which was so lumpy the floor was more comfortable. Julian thumped the floor through the carpet. "I wish this was a giant cushion instead of a carpet," he grumbled, lying down again.

Suddenly it was as though the carpet had been inflated with feathers and down. They all gasped as one, feeling the carpet carefully, experimentally pushing against what should have been the wooden floor, through the carpet, but was instead a soft, yielding cushion.

"Bloody hell," Teddy breathed, testing the carpet with his hands and finding it uniformly soft.

"It must be a _magic carpet_!" Nate said in awe, lying back and sighing in comfort.

"I wish this carpet were lying flat on the floor again," Teddy said experimentally. With a thud, the carpet went back to its original thinness. The other children complained bitterly and little Charlotte started to cry. Teddy shushed them, trying to explain. "I always thought magic carpets could only fly. This one seems to grant wishes. One of the things it _might_ be able to do is fly, so this could be our way out of here. Hold on tight, everyone, we're going to test this." He took a deep breath and said, as authoritatively as he could, "I wish this carpet would rise two feet off the floor."

The little ones cried out again when the carpet obligingly rose two feet above the floor. Unfortunately, the weight of the children caused it to be unstable and little Cedric rolled off one corner. Where each of them sat on the carpet a dent was created. It didn't sit flat, like the flying carpets Teddy had seen in films and cartoons. Cedric climbed on again with help from Nate and sat closer to the centre this time, though that was developing into a pit, with most of the smaller children creating a large dent that made contact with the floor, rather than being elevated two feet in the air. Teddy was finding it difficult to prevent himself tumbling into that pit _or_ off the edge.

"All right, I wish this carpet would move us toward the fireplace and stop front of it," he said. The carpet moved forward, making the other kids squeal with delight and uncertainty. This time Rory tumbled off the edge, holding onto little Diana, whose fall was broken by her cousin.

"Not a very good form of transportation, is it?" Rory grumbled, rubbing her bottom.

"It's too heavy with all of us on it at once," Nate said reasonably. "It's probably not meant to take twelve people."

"There are only ten of us right now," Rory pointed out. "How's it going to take two more?"

Teddy didn't know how they were all going to get out at once. He looked at Nate and knew the answer: _They weren't._ Some of them would have to stay behind. And even those who got out…

He wished for the carpet to go back to where it had been. He walked to one of the tall windows, opened it and peered down again at the stone terrace far below. If the kids who did ride the carpet to freedom rolled off the edge and fell…

"We need to find out how many people can safely ride the thing," he said, his heart in his throat. "There'll need to be more than one trip."

"And we need to hope they don't kill whoever stays behind while waiting for the carpet to come back," Rory said ominously, making her brother glare again.

"Yes," Teddy said through gritted teeth, leaning wearily on the windowsill and staring at the ground again.

Caught up in their conversation, they didn't notice the doorknob turning. When the door to the drawing room suddenly opened and Percy Weasley stepped in everyone was jolted, including Teddy. Percy's eyes went wide when he saw Teddy at the open window.

"Don't jump!" he cried, sprinting across the room and pulling him back from the opening. Teddy tried to prise his hands from his arms but a moment later the hands were released. Nate had unceremoniously leapt onto Percy's back and wrapped his legs around his waist. He had his arm across the older man's neck, threatening to cut off his air.

"You are _not my father_!"

Teddy stared in shock at his best mate. Nate rode on his father's back with his legs wrapped around Percy's waist and his arm across his throat, making Percy produce gagging noises as he struggled to breathe. They were overbalanced and Percy fell backwards on top of Nate, who grunted in pain when he hit the floor and had a much older and heavier body land on top of his. Percy quickly got to his feet and pulled out his wand, backing up and pointing it at each of the children in turn before smirking at his son in a rather un-Percyish manner.

"No, I'm not your father. Took you long enough to work it out, yeah? You've never actually met your father. And now you never will," he added, moving his wand back to Nate in a rather menacing fashion, making Teddy wonder whether he was going to kill Nate with all of them looking on.

 _Not if I can help it,_ he thought, preparing to hurl himself at Percy—or whoever he was—if it would save Nate's life.

At that moment, however, the door opened again and a tall robed figure strode into the room, waving his wand imperiously at the candles on the walls and in the chandelier, so the room was no longer cloaked in twilight gloom. He wore the same sort of mask Crabbe and Goyle had worn in the other house but he was obviously neither Crabbe nor Goyle. Despite his revealing not an inch of his person, he had an air of authority about him, and Teddy realized that they were, for the first time, seeing the ringleader of the kidnapping scheme. The ringleader was certainly not the Percy-pretender.

"Our— _friends_ are back. And they've brought someone with them. She needs to see you as you are now, so don't waste more time here. Come on—"

"—before the potion wears off that makes him look like Nate's dad? Yeah, we know it isn't really him. _He_ told us," Teddy added, pointing at "Percy". The ringleader turned slowly. Through the eyeholes in the mask Teddy could see that he was gazing directly back at him. Teddy shuddered. _Whoever he is, he's dangerous. Very dangerous._

"He did?" came the slow, smooth voice—a voice that was used to being obeyed. "That is of no consequence now. Come," he said to the Percy-impersonator again. " _She_ doesn't know that you aren't Weatherby. We need to find out what she and the others are up to."

"Who's _she_?" Teddy yelled at their backs as they left, locking the door after themselves again. He wasn't surprised that they ignored him but he thought it was worth a try anyway. Nate still sat on the floor, somewhat stunned after his painful landing and his impromptu tussle with the father who wasn't really his father. He put his head in his hands.

"It must be my mum," Nate said in a muffled voice. "Who else would need to believe that he's really my dad? Perhaps _his_ mum, but I can't picture Nana coming." He groaned as he stood, then leaned on the windowsill, as though leaping down to the hard terrace held some appeal. "I didn't really mean… When I said that he wasn't my dad, I just meant—if he were my son, I'd say, _You're no son of mine!_ I meant it like that. Like disowning. No dad of mine would collaborate with kidnappers and dark wizards."

Teddy put his hand on Nate's shoulder and looked out at the darkening landscape. "The problem is, you were right about that. No dad of yours _would_ do that. On the other hand, at least you don't need to hate your dad. That's not him," he said, hoping this would be some small comfort to Nate. As many times as he'd wished someone other than Harry Potter were his father, he'd never thought he was evil. It was just a stupid longing to be a nobody, to be like any other kid at Hogwarts, a typical student who didn't look just like the most famous wizard of the last fifty years. "At least they didn't notice that Ruby and Marguerite aren't here," he said. "That's something."

Nate nodded. "But what about my mum? She must be trying to get us out. What if they kill her, too?"

Teddy tried to maintain the hopeful outlook, but it was growing more and more difficult. "Since whoever's been impersonating your dad could have hurt your mum any time since he came back, I'd guess that she's safe, for now. Maybe he'll even listen to her, negotiate or something."

Nate sat on the floor and took off his glasses, rubbing his hands over his face wearily. "He's made her so _unhappy_. She'd really hoped they could get back together, but he didn't want to. I should have known it wasn't him. She should have too, I reckon, but she wanted it to be him so badly…"

"So did you," Teddy told him bracingly. "And so did Ginny and the twins and Nana and Granddad. No one _wanted_ to see the things that were wrong, the things that didn't fit."

Nate lifted his head suddenly. "Does that mean that my dad's really dead?"

Teddy thought for a moment. "Maybe not. He'd need bits of your dad to put in a potion, to look like him. They must be holding him prisoner, too. Mad-Eye Moody likes to talk about Death Eaters and other stuff from when he was alive. He said he was held prisoner by a Death Eater once for the same reason. The Death Eater had to keep him alive because the hair he was putting in the potion he was using to look like Moody would have been worthless if he were dead. You can only use bits of people who are still alive for that."

Nate looked hopeful again. "You think he's here, then?"

Teddy drew his lips into a line. "Maybe. Hard to say. Maybe he was in the other house. Or maybe Ruby and Marguerite will find him in a dungeon below the house or something. We'll have to wait and see."

He stood and walked to the door, putting his ear to it but hearing nothing. "Wherever they are they don't seem to be on the other side of the door. Or else they've Imperturbed it, so we can't hear anything. Let's hope they're too busy to come right back." He looked at his watch. It had been more than twenty minutes since his sister and step-cousin had gone into the secret passage and he worried that _they_ were worried that they'd been forgotten.

He got help from the other kids moving things off the magic carpet and rolling it back from the trap door. Together, he and Nate lifted the door and swung it back to sit on the rolled-up carpet again. To his relief, Ruby and Marguerite were sitting on the lowest stairs, but no ball of fire sat in Marguerite's hand. As the girls wearily climbed back up to the candlelit drawing room, Marguerite looked around and said, "This room isn't bad with some candles. I put out my light while we were waiting," she explained. "It's rather tiring for me to do for a long time and I reckoned I could give us light again if we needed to do more walking around."

Teddy nodded at her, grateful for this strange veela gift. "Sorry we took so long. We had a little visit from Nate's dad—except that it turns out he _isn't_."

"What?" Ruby said, frowning.

Teddy explained to them what had happened while they were in the tunnel. As he talked they all worked to close the trapdoor again, roll back the carpet and replace the meagre furniture where it had been. He also told them that the carpet was no ordinary carpet, fully expecting Ruby's blasé reaction to this news.

Ruby flopped on the lumpy couch and whistled through the gap between her front teeth. "That's good, because we didn't find out anything useful down below. There are a lot of doors opening off the tunnel, but all of them are locked. And it's hard to tell, but we think the tunnel just goes in a circle. We felt a breeze but couldn't tell where it was coming from. It might be a way out or it might not be. We didn't get far before we had to go back to the stairs. Even if there's a way out down there the carpet sounds like a much better idea."

Teddy agreed, but when he walked to the window again, gazing out at the darkness, he wondered again how they would all escape at once. Then he wondered whether they _should_ all leave or whether he and Nate should stay behind, since Nate's real dad might be a prisoner in the house and his mother may have entered the den of thieves to try to save both Percy and the children. He caught Nate's eye and could tell immediately that Nate was thinking the same thing as he walked to the window and stood beside Teddy. Nate gave him a small nod.

"We get the little kids out," he said quietly. "And I'll stay to look for my mum and dad. My _real_ dad."

Teddy looked at him grimly, also nodding. "Right. Except that I'm staying to help you," he whispered. Nate grimaced but also looked thankful.

"I was hoping you'd say that, but I didn't want to volunteer you. I reckoned you'd do it anyway," he said, grinning at his best friend.

#/#/#

They Apparated to the courtyard behind the Green Dragon in twos. Bill and Fleur arrived first and went to stand by the pub door, holding their brooms like spears. Ron and Luna followed, then Hermione and Neville. Harry and Ginny arrived with their broomsticks in tow as well and quickly moved out of the way for Severus and Arthur.

Molly and Tilda had already hailed the Knight Bus in the street outside Blaise Zabini's London home and left for the Burrow. They decided that Shacklebolt should go into the Malfoy house undercover. Hermione was the best at Transfiguration who was on hand. For a moment Harry wished he'd contacted Theo, who wasn't worked up because his child had been kidnapped, but Hermione quickly had Shacklebolt turned into a small grey mouse. He immediately started squeaking noisily, but this became muffled once he was deep in Penelope's pocket with a biscuit to keep him occupied.

Ron watched Hermione do this, suggesting that they all be Transfigured and enter the house in this way. Hermione made a scoffing noise. "Did you hear how noisy he is? You don't seem to understand, Ron: _he's a mouse now_. As in no longer human, with a human's mind. All he knows is squeaking and eating and pooping. One mouse Penelope could easily control and keep secret from Zabini and Malfoy, but nearly a dozen? Are you mad? Besides, Shacklebolt thinks Zabini smuggled Draco Malfoy out of Azkaban as a ferret. This is _his_ sort of thing. If he catches on to Penelope having even the one mouse he'll probably work out that she's not a traitor and he'll kill her, Shacklebolt, Crabbe and Goyle in a trice. This is risky enough."

"All right, all right, Professor Granger," he grumbled. "I don't need a bleeding lecture."

They took turns putting the Disillusionment Charms on each other in the courtyard of the pub. Only Snape and Arthur hadn't yet been concealed when the pub door suddenly opened. Harry assumed that the figure standing in the doorway was Septimus Flint, backlit weakly by the magical candles in the pub and using his wand to levitate a very drunk-looking wizard he was evicting from the premises.

Flint looked remarkably like his son, who Harry hoped was far away and not inside the pub, with his enormous jaw, teeth that looked too big for his mouth, and nose twisted slightly to the left. Harry had always thought that Marcus Flint's face was due to an unfortunate Quidditch injury and hadn't realised that it was hereditary. He would have sworn that it _was_ Marcus Flint were it not for the fact that Harry had just seen him at the Quidditch final, before the Easter holiday, when Slytherin were playing; he'd come to see his son play. Marcus Flint had had a full head of hair still when Harry had seen him at the match. His father had no hair on the shiny dome of his head, only around the back and sides, hanging greasily onto his collar. Harry wondered how anyone in the pub could accept a drink or food from someone who seemed unaware that soap had been invented.

He held his breath and gripped his broom with one hand and Ginny's arm with the other; four of them stood on either side of the courtyard. If they didn't move, Flint might not detect them standing against the crumbling old walls, blending in with the brick and lichen, and they might not need to worry about whether Flint was likely to return to the pub and get on the Floo network to warn anyone at the Malfoy house. But that didn't solve the problem of Severus and Arthur.

"Weasley?" Flint said, squinting at Arthur in the semi-darkness as he used his wand to direct the drunk into an old horse trough half-filled with muddy water. "And Snape?" he added in confusion. "What in the name of Merlin are _you_ doing here? With _him_ , of all people?"

"Well, ah," Snape began unconvincingly. He looked more than a little startled by Arthur throwing his arm around his shoulder.

"Haven't you heard, Septimus? Severus has a fine son, and his son's half-brother is my grandson. We're practically family! We were having our Easter dinner together, in fact, when I thought it would be nice for us to get away and have a drink somewhere I knew Severus would feel comfortable. I immediately thought of your establishment."

Flint squinted suspiciously at the unlikely pair. The drunk splashed about in the trough, trying to get comfortable.

"You ain't never set foot in my pub in your life, Snape. You neither, Weasley. Only used my courtyard to Apparate here before going up to the Malfoys' place to make trouble, if I recall," he said slowly, his hand still clutching his wand firmly.

As he started to raise his wand toward the pair, the door to the pub suddenly slammed shut and a quiet voice said, " _Stupefy!_ "

It was Neville. Harry could vaguely see his body moving toward Flint where he lay on the ground. The charm made Neville blend in now with the door of the pub, now with the path leading to the door. "Sorry, you two. Didn't seem worth the risk. Next thing we knew he'd be insisting that you both actually come in for a drink and stay a while."

Harry agreed. "Neville's right. Here, let me put the spell on you both."

He camouflaged his father-in-law, but Snape sneered in Harry's direction, saying, "I think I would prefer for Arthur to put the spell on me."

Harry bristled and backed up, glad that the charm made it difficult for Severus to see the face he was making. _How does he do that?_ Harry thought crossly. _Always makes me feel like an incompetent little first year._

When Severus and Arthur were concealed and standing against the wall with the others, Neville revived Flint and Harry immediately memory-charmed him. Flint looked around the courtyard dreamily, blinking, before focusing on the drunk lounging comfortably in the trough.

"Right, then, you. No more of your tricks. Don't know what you did to me but you can bloody well cool your heels out here. I wouldn't Apparate yet, though, if you don't want to Splinch yourself." Flint evidently thought his disorientation had to do with the drunk hexing or jinxing him in retaliation.

The old drunk was quite cheerful and non-confrontational, however. He waved his hand and gave Flint an unconcerned crooked-toothed smile. "Thass alright, Seps-muss. I can talk to the wallsh. Theys vay nice."

Harry froze, wondering whether Flint would investigate the courtyard 'walls', but he rolled his eyes and turned back to the pub door, opening it. When the door was securely closed again, Hermione put a locking spell on it. He could vaguely see her moving her arm if he squinted, but it was hard to tell whether it was a trick of the moonlight.

The old drunk lifted his head and looked around the courtyard, smiling sunnily. "Nice wallsh. Talkin' wallsh. Mulsh nicer than inshide. Bloody unsociable wallsh in dere. Never a nice word for anyone."

Harry whispered to Arthur, "Will he be a problem, do you think?"

"I shouldn't worry. He won't remember this when he sobers up. We should just go. Everyone get ready to kick off!" he said, raising his voice.

"Kick off," echoed the drunk, splashing about in his trough.

#/#/#

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	49. Unplottable

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Forty-Nine**

 **Unplottable**

 **#/#/#**

After flying for an indeterminate amount of time, Arthur had them land at the edge of a large, dark forest that smelled of spring and new growth. They lit their wands to walk through the thick foliage, Arthur in the lead. Since they were all still behaving like chameleons, blending in with their surroundings, it appeared to Harry that ten tiny, frightfully organized fairies were flying through the trees, very slowly and methodically. They each held their broom-handles down, so they could double as walking sticks in the treacherous forest.

The trees were doing some flying of their own, it seemed. Harry could have sworn that they were moving with them as they walked, which was more than a little disconcerting. He didn't like to say anything, but was glad when Ron mentioned it.

"How are we supposed to find the bloody house, Dad, when the trees won't stay still?" Ron complained, stumbling over a root for the fourth time and just barely saving himself by planting his broomstick handle in the dirt. Harry had been watching; the root really had moved directly into Ron's path and raised itself off the forest floor to trip him.

Arthur sighed. "They've improved security. I don't think it's Unplottable anymore, but it might as well be."

"We should split up," Neville said. "This large a group reeks of a raid. We need to be subtler to get around their defences."

"Right," Harry agreed. "If someone gets through they can send a Patronus to the others and the rest of us can fly to the access point. Why don't you come with me and Ginny, Neville? And Arthur and Severus can go with Bill and Fleur, Ron with Luna and Hermione."

It was only after he'd said the last three names together that he realized what a gaffe this was, and he felt Ron hesitate beside him, but it also wasn't the time to worry about such things. Harry tried to put it out of his mind. The others agreed, including Ron, hesitantly. The group of four turned at a right angle and started heading straight through the forest while Harry, Ginny and Neville continued along the perimeter and Ron, Hermione and Luna took the perimeter going in the opposite direction. Surely at some point they'd be able to successfully evade the trees and enter the grounds of the Malfoy estate.

As they slogged through the thick undergrowth, Harry wished he could take Ginny's hand, feel her presence. It was disconcerting to see only the floating light at the end of her wand. _We'll get our kids back_ , he thought with determination. _We will_. But he didn't say this; he didn't want to spout platitudes. He just wanted to see the children again. All of them.

After walking for what seemed miles, he suddenly ploughed into Ginny, who stood stock-still, except for her wand-hand, which was shaking dreadfully. The light wavered all over the place and Harry dropped his broom, reaching out to grasp her arm firmly, to still it. "Ginny? What's wrong?"

Neville ploughed into him, and it was his turn to ask Harry what was wrong. "Dunno, Neville. Ginny stopped. Gin? What is it, Love?" he whispered, holding her arm more gently.

" _They don't just have trees protecting the house,_ " she whispered, the fear in her voice palpable. Harry stepped around her so he could see what she was talking about. Drawing in his breath, he thought, _I should have known._

Before them a virtual wall had been created entirely of many different sizes and species of writhing, large-fanged and presumably venomous snakes. They slithered over and under each other, an eerie, constantly-moving living pseudo-wicker barrier. Beside him, Neville swore. Harry turned his head in surprise; Neville almost _never_ swore. Ron did it like breathing, and Harry was no saint when it came to his language, but he'd never heard Neville say these _particular_ words. Harry didn't feel that this boded well.

"Can't you—can't you _reason_ with them?" Neville asked Harry. "You know—in Parseltongue?"

This hadn't occurred to him. He hadn't tried to use Parseltongue to speak to the basilisk, either. After telling the snake to leave Justin Finch-Fletchley alone he'd never directly addressed another serpent, except for what he'd said to enter the Chamber and save Ginny. But those were just images of snakes, not real snakes. And the basilisk had seemed like it was only interested in obeying one Parselmouth: Tom Riddle.

He watched the writhing bodies, the wand light reflecting off the shining scales and glittering eyes, which did not seem fooled by Disillusionment Charms. There were too many of them to try to hex them and there was no guarantee that even the three of them working together could get every last snake and be utterly out of danger. They could easily miss a very small asp that was capable of killing one of them in a trice. One was all it would take.

"I'll talk to them," Harry said reluctantly, his voice quivering. "I can't guarantee that they'll listen."

"Well, bloody try, Harry!" Ginny said tensely, her arm shaking worse than ever under his hand.

"What if they're enchanted?" Harry said, his voice going up a little. "I mean—they _must_ be, since they look so, erm, _organised_."

"Well _obviously_ they're organised," Neville said, sounding as nervous as Harry felt. "That's why we need you to reason with them. We don't know what would happen if we try stunning them, or using any other spell."

"But what if being enchanted means I _can't_ reason with them? Malfoy knew I'd probably be coming to try to get the kids. And that I speak Parseltongue."

"You don't know that he's thought of you speaking Parseltongue, Harry," Ginny said. "I think you need to try. He's probably just keeping people out in general. He has no idea that Percy has sent us a letter about the whole kidnapping scheme. Draco Malfoy didn't send us a ransom note and say, _Please bring a million Galleons to my home._ We're not _expected_."

"Right. You're right, of course. We're not expected. This isn't just for us." But that didn't make him feel better. Harry stared at the slithering, writhing bodies and cleared his throat. " _Please step, erm, move aside. Do not harm us. Allow us to pass unharmed,_ " he added for good measure, feeling like an idiot. An idiot who spoke to snakes and might very shortly die of snakebite.

There was no visible change in the mass of snakes at first. Slowly, a few moved up and to either side, creating a low arch that would require them to crawl on their hands and knees to get through.

"Well, whatever you said worked. In a way. It's rather a small passage," she observed, and Harry couldn't disagree. "I take it we should assume that Apparating is out of the question?" she added, staring at the opening in the wall of snakes.

"Be my guest, if you're fond of being Splinched," Neville said ominously. "Trying to work around Anti-Apparition Jinxes is no picnic. Ask the staff at St Mungo's. And several Aurors I know."

Harry sighed. "I think Neville's right. I'd bet my life that there are Anti-Apparition Jinxes all over the forest and grounds. That's another reason I think your dad didn't suggest using Apparition. The only place that probably isn't protected with jinxes is the house, and you can't get in there unless you've been told the secret by the Secret Keeper or unless you're taken in by someone else who's been told, like Penelope and Shacklebolt will be, and like the children were." Ginny gave a small frustrated groan and Harry went on, "Neville and I will go first, won't we? And then you'll see it's all right." He hoped he sounded more reassuring than he felt.

He and Neville moved toward the snakes; He went to his knees, saying, " _Thank you for letting us pass and not hurting us._ "

"What did you say, Harry?" Neville wanted to know as he crawled through the opening. Harry never got the chance to answer, for as soon as they were both through, the snakes moved into position again, recreating the uninterrupted wall of slithering reptiles.

#/#/#

Penelope stood between Crabbe and Goyle, very aware of the mouse in her pocket that was Kingsley Shacklebolt, waiting for Draco Malfoy and Blaise Zabini to come to the dining room to discuss her having betrayed the others to help Crabbe and Goyle escape. When Malfoy entered he was still wearing Percy's face, and she had to restrain herself from running to him and flinging her arms around his neck. _That isn't Percy. It never was._ Though she could see nothing of Zabini beneath his mask and robes, she knew that was who it had to be when he entered first. Malfoy-as-Percy followed.

Malfoy froze in surprise when he saw her. "Penny!" He stared at his old mates. "Crabbe and Goyle! I thought you were arrested!" Penelope fought the urge to roll her eyes. Malfoy was rubbish at keeping his cover. There were a thousand small things he'd got wrong that she remembered only after she knew that she'd never been with Percy since his 'return'. He'd fooled her quite well for a long time, and she would never cease to feel incredibly stupid about having been taken in by someone who was such a bad actor.

"We were," said Goyle slowly, dutifully repeating the words Harry had taught him. "And we thought we were for Azkaban, but then _she_ started stunning people and helped us escape and come back here."

Malfoy widened his eyes, evidently regarding Penelope Clearwater in a new light. Penelope looked boldly at him, trying to think very quickly about what to say. "I know you've thrown in your lot with them, Percy," she said, trying not to choke on the name. "I have to say, you've disappointed me so much since you've come back that I no longer care. You are clearly not the person I fell in love with when I was a girl." _That's putting it lightly_. "All I care about now are my sons. One of them is your son also, and you may not give a damn about him, but I do. If they're going to be killed," she said, her voice catching, "then I want to be with them. You'll have to kill me, too. I couldn't just stand by and accept that there was nothing to be done, because neither of these two are the Secret Keeper, and—"

"Quiet!"

Zabini looked penetratingly at Penelope through the enigmatic mask. "You know about the Fidelius Charm?"

Crabbe looked sheepish. "We, uh, were trying to explain to them why it weren't no good to torture us get us to tell them where the kids were. We couldn't tell them nothing. She don't even know where we are. We kept her from seeing. But since she helped us escape we brought her along, in case we needed a hostage to get away."

Zabini paced, clearly trying to decide what to do about her. He turned abruptly and waved his wand, causing a chair to appear behind her. The chair moved forward and forced her to sit. Ropes appeared and bound her tightly to the chair. Crabbe and Goyle stepped back, staring.

"You're telling me that _Aurors_ tortured you?" he said imperiously, addressing Crabbe and Goyle.

They looked at each other. "Well, no. Didn't say we _were_ tortured," Crabbe said slowly. "We told them it wouldn't do no good, that's all. We had nothing useful to say. We wasn't questioned by Aurors, anyway. It was Potter and Longbottom, and their wives."

Zabini sighed wearily. "Longbottom _is_ an Auror."

Crabbe shuffled his feet. "Oh, yeah."

"And since Potter and his wife teach Defence at Hogwarts," Zabini continued, "they might as well be Aurors. And Granger works for the Ministry. Did you truly think that Potter or Longbottom were going to hex you?"

"He said the law couldn't touch him," Goyle responded, "no matter what he did to us. He had too many friends in high places. Trying to scare us."

"But Granger was scarier," said Crabbe, shuddering visibly.

Zabini nodded and he resumed pacing. Draco said, "That sounds like Potter. He always did think he was above everyone else, could get away with murder…"

Zabini waved this away. "Potter would never do that. Not to these two, anyway. He was bluffing. He'd need to mean it. I can't see him getting worked up over Crabbe and Goyle, even because of his children. Now, if he had _you_ in his clutches, I could see him breaking the law."

" _Shut up_ ," Draco hissed. " _I'm Weasley, remember?_ "

It was impossible to tell what Zabini was thinking with the mask in place. "I disagree with your assessment of Potter. That's one of his greatest weaknesses: he does not, in fact, think he's above everyone else. I do not believe that he thinks he can get away with murder. It is my understanding that he did not even execute the Dark Lord. Not technically. I'm not certain that Potter _does_ have it in him to kill, except possibly in self-defence, or the defence of another person. For his children he would probably go further than he ever has, or for his wife, but he would need to be pushed to his limit."

He turned to Penelope. "I am glad that you worked out that it was hopeless and that the children are going to die regardless of what you do." Penelope felt a chill inside at his casual words. "You are a loving mother, to want to be with your sons at their deaths. More than I can say for _some_ mothers."

For the first time, Penelope noticed with a gasp that Narcissa Malfoy had been unceremoniously propped in a corner of the dining room, strands of her blonde hair criss-crossing her face. She was either stunned or had already been killed. Perhaps rigor-mortis had set in.

"Is she—?"

"—dead?" Zabini finished. "No. Not yet. Who knows? Perhaps we'll kill her and spare you. You used to be fond of our Percy. I may let him keep you as a pet."

Penelope spat on Zabini's robes. "I'm no one's pet. When can I see my sons?"

Zabini strode to the door. "When I say you can. _If_ I decide that you can. You do not seem to understand, Miss Clearwater, that simply because you have helped Crabbe and Goyle to escape, with the intention of being with your sons before their deaths, that does not mean that I must agree to your plan. I do _not_ need to agree. You may or may not have the opportunity to see them before they and you are killed. If you are killed. As I may not have Narcissa any longer for my amusement—well, use your imagination. The Imperius Curse would render you quite pliant and agreeable. Remember, Miss Clearwater: you are not in charge. _I am_."

Penelope shook, wondering whether the plan had any chance at all of working. "I don't know who you are," she lied, "but you're a monster," was all she could think to say.

"I hope to be far more than that, far more. Did you think we were going to serve you tea and crumpets and reunite you with your boys the moment you arrived, just because you helped Crabbe and Goyle? You're very naive for your age, Miss Clearwater. Consider yourself lucky that I did not kill you on the spot. I confess that I was curious about you. When I have had the opportunity to determine how or whether you might be useful to me I shall tell you my decision. I may inform you by killing you. At this time I cannot say."

Without another word, he left the room, 'Percy' again travelling in his wake.

Penelope's heart was in her throat. "I think it was a bad idea for Harry to tell you to say that he threatened to torture you. Zabini knows Harry wouldn't do that. I don't think he bought what you were saying at all. Which means he probably doesn't believe that I turned traitor to help you get back here, so I could see my boys." She looked up at the hulking Slytherins sorrowfully. "I'm sorry to say this, but I have a bad feeling he's just going to kill all three of us. And the children." She _hoped_ that that was the alternative to getting the kids back. She didn't want to contemplate being Zabini's sex-slave until he thought she'd lost her looks, especially after his being responsible, with Draco Malfoy, for her sons' deaths. Penelope had never considered what might make her want to commit suicide, but thinking about living a life without her sons and as Zabini's sex slave was making her consider her alternatives.

Crabbe and Goyle looked as disappointed as small children who had just found out that Father Christmas had passed them over, and thinking about this failure, Penelope had to fight very hard not to cry.

#/#/#

"Ginny!" Harry cried out, backing away from the snakes. Now it was his turn to swear.

"Harry!" she shouted from the other side of the wall. The overlapping serpentine bodies formed a barrier so thick that he couldn't see her wandlight through it.

"Bloody hell," he muttered. " _Please open again_ ," he said to the snakes. " _My wife still needs to pass_."

The snakes didn't create another opening. They simply ignored him and continued to slither over each other. He asked more gently, then more adamantly. Nothing had any effect on them.

"Harry!" Ginny said, after listening to his ineffectual hissing. "I'll stay where I am and send my dad and Ron a Patronus each," she yelled to him. "I'll tell them to meet me here and the eight of us together should be able to overcome the snakes without a Parselmouth to help. Hopefully. You can't wait for the rest of us, though. It's getting late! You and Neville are going to have to try to push on to find the house."

"But—but Ginny," Harry started to say.

"Ginny's right, Harry," Neville said. "We should go on."

"Good luck, Harry," she said, a choke in her voice. Harry wished that she'd got through with them, that he could hold her now and tell her that everything was going to be all right.

"See you soon," he replied with mock-confidence.

He and Neville turned and resumed trudging through the undergrowth. It felt like they trudged for hours. Harry felt tree roots wrap around his ankles more than once, prompting him to jump free, and three times he and Neville had to fire curses at branches clutching at them.

At length, the forest thinned and they saw lights shining through the tree branches. The Malfoy home sat in the middle of an enormous park that might once have been maintained quite well. However, even in the light of the half-moon, Harry could see how badly the grass needed cutting, how mangy the topiaries were. Numerous empty statuary bases were scattered across the park. As they drew nearer to the house, Harry was glad that they still had the Disillusionment Charm on them. He was tempted to ride his broom up to one of the windows, to see whether he really could look in but not see anything of note. Ultimately, he decided that he and Neville should settle in an inconspicuous spot as close to the house as possible, where the moonlight wouldn't give them telltale shadows, and wait for the other eight or for Penelope, Percy, Shacklebolt, Crabbe or Goyle to somehow get the kids outdoors to safety.

They sat behind a huge topiary at the edge of the terrace, so the topiary's shadow and theirs would blend. Harry gazed at the house through gaps in the shrubbery. Only one room on this side had lights in the windows, but he could see no shadows moving in the room. Harry had never felt so ineffectual in his life, sitting with Neville and waiting for someone else to rescue his children. This was _not_ supposed to happen to _him_. He didn't want to say this aloud, however, because he didn't want Neville to feel insulted. Neville had completed Auror training, after all, and had performed admirably in his job for years.

"I still can't believe that wasn't Percy," Harry whispered, still staring at the house.

Neville heaved a great sigh. "I talked to Shacklebolt about it. I think that's why he wanted to go in with Penelope—he felt rather guilty about that. Blames himself. He remembers when Zabini and Malfoy's mum came to Azkaban to see Malfoy last. Zabini had a pet ferret with him that was probably the wizard we found in Malfoy's cell, Transfigured. And then he Transfigured Malfoy into a ferret to get him out again. A witch, a wizard and a ferret go in, a witch, a wizard and a ferret go out. Either they left the man with some Polyjuice Potion and put a spell on him to get him to take it periodically or the Aurors simply didn't double-check on Malfoy after they left. What should have raised a red flag was that after that, Malfoy's mum didn't come to visit him again. She hadn't been visiting very often—once a year—but she _had_ been visiting."

Harry nodded. "And now they're planning to take the kids' magic. I wonder where they got an idea like that? I didn't even know a spell like that existed."

"Erm," Neville said, sounding nervous; "Voldemort tried to do that to you, don't you remember?"

Harry frowned. "No. What? When was that?"

"When we were at the Ministry in our seventh year. Before you and Ron went through the Veil," Neville said quietly.

 _The doors were spinning again. Harry and Neville stared at them desperately. "How are we going to know which one Ron went through?" Neville cried, his voice breaking._

 _Harry shook his head. He didn't know, but he had to work it out. His best friend's life might depend upon it. There was no telling who Ron might be encountering in the chamber he'd entered. It had all happened so fast._

 _Suddenly the doors stopped and Harry looked around at them desperately. "Uh—let's go through that one!" Neville could tell that it made Harry nervous to know that Ron was on his own, but the door had slammed shut behind him and the wall was spinning again before Harry could go after his best mate. He put his hand on the knob and opened the door he'd chosen, but stopped short. He was face-to-face with Lucius Malfoy. Malfoy pointed his wand at Harry, walking toward him, making Harry back up. From behind Lucius, he emerged._

 _Voldemort._

 _Neville stood at Harry's side. The strange, pale face with the red eyes said, "Well, well, well, look who we have here. Not one but two Prophecy Boys. Yes, I could have chosen you, boy, the pureblood. Your parents also defied me three times. Why do you think my servants pursued me through them? They knew that you were one of the possibilities, that you could be the one to fulfil the prophecy…"_

 _Neville stood as straight and tall as he could, despite shaking head to toe. "How do you know it's not me? How do you know you haven't met your match?"_

 _Harry stepped in front of Neville._

" _Leave Neville alone. It's me you want," he said, as if trying to sound braver than he felt._

 _Voldemort laughed that cold, cruel, high laugh. "Protecting his friends again. Don't worry, I have my priorities in order, Potter. You first, then—the spare," he said. Neville had read the interview Harry gave Rita Skeeter. He knew that this choice of words was deliberate, intended to get under Harry's skin._

" _The spell, My Lord," Lucius Malfoy said eagerly. "The spell I told you about."_

 _Voldemort looked annoyed. "I remember, Malfoy. I know that you are in no hurry to be recaptured and returned to Azkaban, so I shan't keep you waiting any longer." His unearthly red eyes bored into Harry as he said, "So, you have power that I do not? How very odd, when I happen to know a spell that will render you completely powerless and give all of your power to me. Let's see how much of a 'Chosen One' you are then, Potter."_

 _With a silent wave of his wand Harry was paralysed and looked like he could barely draw breath; he neither spoke nor waved his wand. Voldemort shouted the incantation and pointed his wand. Neville knew he had to do it quickly, before it was too late, though he didn't know whether it would be his last act before dying. It took him a moment to realize that leaping before Harry and taking the curse in his place hadn't killed him, nor did it seem to do anything else detrimental. He quickly turned and pointed his wand at Harry, undoing the spell Voldemort had placed on him._

" _Finite Incantatem!"_

 _In a trice, Harry waved his wand and ropes bound Malfoy and Voldemort together, arms at their sides. Voldemort swore at Lucius Malfoy. "It didn't work, Malfoy! They both still have their magic!" he cried, as Harry, still seeking for Ron, pulled open another door and stumbled through the opening._

 _The Death Chamber._

"After you went into the Death Chamber, Voldemort threw off the bindings on him and Malfoy, who said the spell I took for you should have taken my magic away—unless I was no longer an innocent child." In the shadow of the topiary, Harry couldn't see Neville, since the Disillusionment Charm made him look like a topiary himself. However, Harry felt that he could _hear_ Neville blushing. "Malfoy asked how I could possibly have got a girl to—well, you know. That's all he said before Voldemort killed him. While he was casting the curse, I went through the door after you. I tried to lock it, but I wasn't quick enough."

"How did he know you'd been with anyone?"

"The spell didn't work on me. Because—well, Hermione and I—"

"—had already been to the Room of Requirement together," Harry said, nodding. "I assume you two didn't have the ghost of Mad-Eye Moody interrupting the pair of you every time you tried to be alone."

"Is that what happened to you and Ginny? Merlin's beard, I think I'd rather have had _Snape_ catch us than have Moody's ghost. Talk about a moodkiller," he said, laughing softly. Harry had to laugh as well. It _had_ been frustrating when he was a teenager but was somewhat funny in retrospect.

He stopped laughing abruptly when he thought further about the situation he'd been in and what Neville had saved him from. "You didn't just save me from having my magic taken, Neville," he told him. "You saved—everyone. I doubt that I would have been able to do what I did after I went through the Veil, or that I would have been able to return, if it weren't for you."

"But Harry, you wouldn't have had your magic taken from you either. I mean, Teddy was born nine months after your sixteenth birthday…" Neville said sheepishly, as if trying not to accuse Harry of something unseemly.

Harry sighed. "He was. But—but I didn't father him when I was sixteen." He explained to Neville that he'd visited Parvati and had recovered the memory of seeing his adult self in the doorway of Tilda's bedroom on the morning of his sixteenth birthday.

"Blimey, Harry. And if you don't find a way to travel back in time to your sixteenth birthday…"

"…all hell will break loose, evidently. Yeah. I have to cheat on Ginny, even though I don't want to, or—"

"Right. Bloody hell. I wouldn't want to have to tell Hermione I had to cheat on her for any reason. I think having anything to cheat on her _with_ would come to an end first." Harry snorted and Neville chuckled, then sobered. "I didn't know what the spell would do when I leapt in front of you. I reckon I'm damn lucky Hermione and I, er, did what we did. It's the only reason I didn't have my magic taken," Neville whispered.

"But our kids—"

"They're still vulnerable," Neville confirmed. "All of them. I mean, unless Nate and Teddy… They're the eldest. But still, they seem terribly young for that sort of thing."

Harry nodded, even though he knew Neville couldn't see the nod. "Nate's fifteen last Hallowe'en. And Teddy will be fifteen on the first of May. In a few weeks. Nate doesn't have a girlfriend. Teddy does, it's a recent thing, but—no. It's not very likely that he and Enika… I can't imagine them already…" Harry stood and kicked the topiary planter in anger and frustration. "That's why they took _kids_. It's not fair, to target _children_ this way. Why can't they bloody find a spell to take an adult's magic? Why does it have to be kids?"

"I don't know, Harry," Neville said softly.

"Well, I'm not going to let it happen," Harry said adamantly. "We have to let them know there's help waiting out here." He saw that one of the windows was open one flight up from the ground floor, in the room with the candles flickering. "I'm sending Teddy a Patronus. No one else can tell what it says, just Teddy. He needs to know that there's hope. I'll tell him about Percy and Penelope and Crabbe and Goyle, and that we're waiting out here and the others are trying to break through the defences in the forest. They need to know that we're trying."

"Okay. That's a fairly secure method of communication. I just hope—" But Neville didn't finish his sentence. Harry wondered whether he was worried about giving the kids false hope.

 _It's not false hope,_ Harry thought. _We're going to get them out_.

"We have to," he said, as though Neville had heard his thoughts.

"We have to what?" Neville wanted to know.

"Never mind. I'll send Teddy the message." He pointed his wand toward the house and thought about everything he wanted to say to his son, then cried softly, "Expecto Patronum!" and watched the glowing white stag erupt from the end of his wand and gallop toward the open window. "I think that's where they are!" Harry said excitedly. "It's going toward that window!"

"There's rather a steep drop to the ground from there," Neville said apprehensively. Harry swallowed.

"I see that."

 _It'll be all right, Teddy,_ he thought desperately. _We're here for you. Everything is going to be all right._

 _No one is going to take my son's power without a fight from me._

#/#/#

"I'm staying to help Nate rescue his real dad," Teddy said, glaring at the others with his arms crossed. "The rest of you are going, and that's that."

"I'm not going without you, Nate," Julian said loyally.

Ruby and Rory looked at each other, their mouths twisting, before Ruby sighed and said, "Oh-no-if-you're-not-going-then-neither-are-we," in a very mechanical voice, rolling her eyes.

"Ruby, don't be ridiculous. Do you think I _want_ you to stay, just out of loyalty? No. You're going. You too, Julian," Teddy said as authoritatively as he could.

Rory sighed. "Okay, because you know we, erm, love you and all, but—"

Teddy brushed away her half-hearted expression of affection. "The important thing is to get as many of you out as we can. You'll wish for the rug to come back, then, and we'll get out after that."

Marguerite looked uncertain. "I thought you said it was struggling with ten on it?"

"Yes, but that's when the ten included the two of us," Teddy said. "We're the biggest. We should be the ones to wait. Now, everyone pile on in the middle, as close together as you can. Ruby and Rory, you hold up the sides so the carpet will fit out the window, and you hold up the back, Julian and Marguerite, to make sure no one falls off. Everyone sit as far back from the front as possible. Put your arms around each other and around Ruby, Rory, Julian and Marguerite."

"And then what?" Ruby asked, her hands on her hips. "If it can't carry twelve of us at once, what's the point of sending it back to get you? We'll just be on the grounds of the house, instead of _in_ the house. You think they don't have any security on the grounds?"

"I thought of that," Teddy said quickly. He had finally come up with a solution to their transportation problem. "After all of us are out, we'll wish for the carpet to inflate itself again, you know, like a big cushion, and _then_ we'll wish for it to fly us up to London, or maybe The Burrow. Once it's in that form it'll hold all of us with no problem. We can't fly it out the window while it's like that because it's too wide, so we have to wait until we're outside."

Rory looked sceptical. "Shouldn't we test it? Flying with all twelve of us on it while it's like a cushion?"

Teddy turned and looked toward the door, then hurried to it and placed his ear against it. "Bugger! No time. They're coming back! It's now or never." He shooed the children in the direction of the carpet while he motioned to Nate to help him move the couch in front of the door.

"You think this will stop them?" Nate whispered, bracing himself against the couch and door. "Because I think it's just going to slow them down a little. And probably not enough."

"That's fine. That's all we need to do to give them the chance to get out." He didn't say, _We're not getting out,_ because there was clearly no hope of their being able to send the carpet back for Nate and Teddy. Whatever their captors were going to do to them, Teddy and Nate would take the brunt of it.

Nate nodded, his face very white under his freckles, and went back to pressing himself against the door as firmly as he could while standing on the couch. Teddy looked at the other children; they'd managed to get the carpet to hover just above windowsill-height while they continued to get settled, then Ruby and Rory picked up the sides of the carpet, holding them as tightly as they could, just as the doors started to open and Nate and Teddy pushed back against the doors using the couch.

"Go, go!" Teddy said desperately. "Now!"

"No! I'm not leaving you, Nate!" Julian cried. Two things happened at once: a large, ghostly stag galloped in through the open window and headed straight for Teddy, and Julian leapt off the back of the carpet while Marguerite grabbed desperately at the edge and pulled it up again, just as the carpet sailed out the open window. Julian ran to Nate and pushed his frail little frame against the couch, but the three of them couldn't keep the doors from opening, especially since Teddy was suddenly distracted by his father's Patronus, which he'd immediately recognised.

 _It's all right, son._ Harry's words went through his brain very quickly. _Uncle Neville and I are outside, beside the terrace. Others are in the forest, trying to reach the house. Inside the house you have five allies: Percy, Penelope, Crabbe, Goyle and an Auror, Kingsley Shacklebolt. Draco Malfoy has been pretending to be Percy. Blaise Zabini is the ringleader. We're going to get you out of there as soon as we can but the Fidelius Charm is stopping us from entering. Don't lose hope._

Teddy gasped. He wanted to tell Nate what Harry had said, but their captors were not making it easy to keep the doors closed, though they didn't seem to be using magic. They appeared to be using just their own strength, like Teddy, Nate and Julian. The three of them were flung backwards and the couch fell on them when the doors were pushed open roughly and Nate's dad entered the room with the tall man in the long robes and the mask. Or rather, Draco Malfoy entered with the masked man. Crabbe and Goyle followed them into the room, and Teddy realised with a sinking feeling that it had probably been the strength of these two that had enabled them to break through. _Why does Dad think they're on our side?_ They still seemed to be loyal to Malfoy and Zabini.

Nate didn't know about Harry's Patronus being a message. "What're you two doing here?" he said from the floor, as though there wasn't a couch sitting painfully on his legs.

"We know who you are!" Julian cried out, springing to his feet, which surprised Teddy, since Julian didn't know the contents of Harry's message either. The couch had evidently missed Julian, though he'd been knocked flat by Nate falling on him when the doors opened. Draco Malfoy looked panicked at that, until he realised that Julian meant Crabbe and Goyle.

The tall man didn't waste any time talking, however. With a wave of his wand he sent the couch flying across the room, where it smashed itself into kindling and stuffing against the wall. Teddy's heart was going very fast, wondering what this wizard would do to them when he realised the others had escaped. _I might not live long enough for you to get into the house, Dad._

"Where are they?" he asked ominously, looking around the room and seeing only Nate, Teddy and Julian. Nate stepped in front of Julian, tucking him behind his back, while Julian put his hands between Teddy and Nate and tried to peek between them. The wizard pointed his wand at Teddy and said, "You're Potter's son. Probably fancy yourself a leader. Where are the other children?"

Teddy clamped his mouth shut. So did Nate. "Fine," the wizard said, reaching between them and grabbing Julian by the neck. Teddy and Nate tried to prise his hands from Julian, but 'Percy' shot a curse at the two of them and Nate and Teddy recoiled from Julian and the tall wizard, their hands stinging as though they'd been trying to touch a jellyfish.

"Ow!" Nate cried, cradling his hands against his stomach, doubled over in pain. Teddy was trying not to cry himself, in the same position as Nate, while the tall wizard held Julian by the neck with one hand and pointed his wand at him with his other.

"I said," came the voice from behind the mask, as unperturbed as ever. "Where are the other children?"

"Gone!" Teddy and Nate said at the same time. Teddy hoped that he'd simply let Julian go.

"They flew off," Teddy told him, wishing he'd been able to tell the other kids about Harry and Neville before they had. "Probably halfway to London by now."

The hand on Julian's throat was as firm as ever. Julian struggled in his grasp, trying ineffectually to prise the fingers from his throat as they tightened their grip. "They _flew off_? And how, pray tell, did they do this?"

Draco Malfoy paced over the dark floorboards where the carpet had lain. "Bloody hell. The carpet's gone. They took the magic carpet!"

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	50. Under the Floor

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Fifty**

 **Under the Floor**

 **#/#/#**

The carpet landed on the grass with a bump. Harry stared. It was as though the children had materialized from nowhere, even more silently than someone Apparating, and certainly with less chaos than a Portkey. Harry and Neville broke cover and dashed from behind the topiary, hugging the children happily. Unfortunately, this frightened them, since their Disillusionment Charms were still in effect, so the children seemed to be under attack from chameleon people.

"Sssh!" Harry said desperately. "Calm down, kids! It's me, Uncle Harry! Uncle Neville's here as well."

"Dad!" Ruby whispered jubilantly, hugging him quickly. He held his daughter closely for a split second before releasing her.

"How did you escape? Is this carpet what I think it is?"

"If you think it's a magic carpet, then yes," Rory said, also hugging him quickly. He kissed the top of her head, smiling and trying not to cry with happiness.

"Brilliant. Good job, everyone! All right, get behind this big ugly shrub here, it'll help prevent shadows, and then we can tell everyone else that you're all right. We can just make the carpet into a Portkey or something to get you all out of here."

He wondered fleetingly where Percy, Penelope and Shacklebolt were, and whether Crabbe and Goyle were all right, but another part of his brain said, _They knew what they were getting into. They knew that the object was to save the kids._

Harry cried softly, " _Expecto Patronum!_ " to send a message to Ginny, telling her that the children were safe.

"All right now, have you all used Portkeys before? It can be a little bumpy."

"Yeah, that's how they brought us here from the other house," little Percy said.

"But we can't leave yet!" Ruby cried. Harry hesitated.

"Why not?"

"Nate and Teddy and Julian are still inside!"

Harry squinted at the children in the moonlight. "Wait—this isn't all of you?"

Rory explained what had happened and Harry turned to look at the house, which seemed as much of a cipher as ever. "But now that you're here, Dad, you can just go in and rescue them, right?" she said, her voice shaking.

Harry shook his head sadly. "No, didn't Teddy tell you? I sent him a message. I can't get into the house. There's a charm on it." He explained the Fidelius Charm to the children. _That explains it,_ Harry thought. He'd wondered why Teddy hadn't hugged him, like his sisters, putting it down to his age. But that wasn't it at all. Teddy wasn't with the other children.

He looked at the house, thinking how far they'd come, how close they'd been to rescuing all of the kids and protecting them from losing their magic.

But they still weren't close enough.

#/#/#

The wizard released Julian, thrusting him at Teddy and Nate, who caught him. Nate went to his knees, hugging his little brother, but Julian shook him off crossly. "I'm not a baby, Nate," he complained, extricating himself and rubbing his neck, which bore the white imprint of the wizard's hand, surrounded by red.

"Do you mean to tell me, Malfoy, that you put our prisoners in a room that contained almost nothing except _a magic carpet_?" Teddy had never heard a colder voice, yet it wasn't high-pitched, as his dad had always described Voldemort's voice. This voice managed to be cold and deep at the same time. Teddy shuddered at the sound of it.

"Well, I hardly expected them to find out that it's a magic carpet. I was just glad to see that Mum hadn't sold it. And shut up! You just called me—" He looked down at his hands and arms. "Oh, bollocks."

Teddy stared at him. A tall, thin blond man stood before them, his pointed chin shaking as he beheld the wrath of his cohort, despite the mask hiding the other wizard's face.

"You're Draco Malfoy, aren't you?" Teddy said. He would have known immediately who he was even if Harry hadn't told him and if Zabini hadn't just said his name. "I thought you were in Azkaban?"

Draco smirked in a way that made Teddy want to _smack_ him. He recognised the expression from when he had still appeared to be Percy. "Yeah, well, don't believe everything you read, kid. I thought your dad didn't go after women twice his age, too, but you're here, aren't you?" He snorted. "Harry Bleeding Potter. Shagging away when he was sixteen. I think even if I'd seen it I wouldn't have believed it. Your mother must be some kind of—"

"I'd stop talking if I were you," Nate warned him in a low voice. Teddy glanced at Julian, who was turning quite red. He knew that Tilda was being insulted and that was good enough for him. Teddy wished that Nate hadn't warned Malfoy. _Hopefully Julian's fury will be good enough to turn someone into a walrus_ , Teddy thought _. Or a couple of someones._

"Are _you_ telling _me_ to shut up?" Draco said incredulously. "Ha! You _are_ Percy Weasley's kid, aren't you? Think you're everyone's boss, everyone's superior."

"That does not matter," the tall wizard said, taking down his hood and removing his mask. Teddy was surprised to see an ordinary man, though not unattractive, with dark, curling hair. He was nothing special after all, though his mud-brown eyes were the cruellest, deadest eyes Teddy had ever seen. "Since I am going to be _everyone's_ superior."

"Wh-what?" Draco sputtered. "Just a minute! I know we don't have as many kids—"

"Because you allowed them to escape with a magic carpet," the tall wizard said, as though he had all the time in the world.

"—but the plan was to make _me_ the next great Dark Lord, not you, Zabini. And, well, even though I haven't been very certain lately that that's what I want—"

"That is just as well," Zabini interrupted, "since you are _not_ going to be the next great Dark Lord, and never were." Without another word he pointed his wand and Draco went shooting across the room backwards, hitting the wall very hard and crumpling to the floor in a heap. "You must be," Zabini said, addressing Draco's unconscious form, "the stupidest person I have ever met. And I know Crabbe and Goyle."

"Erm, Blaise? Erm, Lord Zabini, I mean, erm, what do you want us to call you now?" Crabbe said uncertainly, looking in Draco's direction and presumably not wanting to join him.

"Zabini is fine. And you can take those bloody stupid masks off. It's not as though it matters. These three aren't getting out of here alive. They can't tell anyone about this."

The hulking wizards took down their hoods and removed their masks. Teddy tried not to think about the words _These three aren't getting out of here alive_ and tried instead to remember his dad's message, telling him that Crabbe and Goyle were allies. _I hope Dad's right,_ he thought fervently.

"Goyle, go to the window and see whether you can still spot the children who escaped," Zabini instructed him.

Goyle obliged and strode to the open window. He looked up into the dark sky, shaking his head. "I don't see nothing, Zab—er, my Lord. Least not on this side of the house."

Teddy's heart sank into his shoes. If Goyle was on their side, he was doing a damn good job of appearing otherwise. He didn't seem to have the brains to do much in the way of acting.

Zabini shrugged. "I thought as much. Very well. My power will still be increased four-fold with the addition of the power these three have, and I can always acquire other wizarding children. It was just rather delicious to have those _particular_ children." He gave Teddy, Nate and Julian a rather disturbing smile. "These three will do rather nicely, though. Harry Potter's very own bastard, and the bastards of two spies. Funny how three metaphorical bastards all had _literal_ bastards."

"Meta-what?" Crabbe whispered, frowning. Zabini appeared not to have heard him.

"Get back here, Goyle," Zabini ordered him. Goyle seemed to have been looking at the terrace below the drawing room. "You two, open the trapdoor. It's time."

Crabbe looked at his watch. "It ain't midnight yet," he told Zabini.

 _There's another one for their side,_ Teddy thought dispiritedly. _They're just out to protect themselves. We have no allies here._

"I know that, idiot. It's time to go down to the chamber to prepare for the ritual. It shall be midnight soon enough."

Teddy stared into the darkness when the door was opened, remembering what Ruby and Marguerite had said about the locked doors in the corridor. _I wish they'd managed to get one open, so we'd know what we're up against,_ he thought, swallowing as Goyle grasped his elbow rather tightly and guided him down the stairs. Crabbe followed, grasping both Nate and Julian's arms and Zabini followed, well behind.

What Teddy was _not_ expecting was for Goyle to lean over as they walked through the dank corridor, holding his lit wand aloft, and whisper in Teddy's ear, " _Don't worry, kid. We came back to help youse. Your friends' mum is here to help, too. And an Auror and Percy Weasley. The real Percy Weasley._ " Teddy jerked his head up, trying to tell whether the hulking man was kidding. Goyle nodded and gave him a small smile.

Teddy tried to remember to breathe as he, Nate and Julian walked uncertainly through the damp-smelling corridor far under the Malfoys' drawing room, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle. He was aware of Zabini's footsteps behind them. _You'd think there would be something we could do!_ he thought desperately. _We've got him outnumbered five-to-one._ On the other hand, he wasn't sure how quick Crabbe or Goyle were with their wands and he, Nate and Julian were unarmed. Perhaps if he could get a wand. Harry and Ginny had started teaching them the rudiments of duelling during the winter term and Teddy had done rather well, though he'd initially been reluctant to attack Ginny. When they'd started duelling with classmates he was less restrained, and both Harry and Ginny had rewarded him with smiles of approval. To the surprise of everyone, Donna had been the best in the class at duelling, while Teddy and Nate came next and were fairly evenly matched. Enika performed admirably but she was always reluctant to attack Teddy. She definitely lacked Donna's 'killer instinct', as Harry called it.

Teddy grimaced, wishing Donna were with them and then amending this thought, because he wouldn't have wished this on anyone if he had a choice. He wondered now whether he and Nate would ever see Donna again, or Enika, or his mum or his sisters, or his dad. Which made him think, _What would Harry do?_

He glanced over his shoulder for a moment at Zabini, who had acquired a huge old leather-bound book from somewhere. What _would_ Harry do? Even after being taught Defence Against the Dark Arts by Harry Potter for almost four years he had no idea what The Boy Who Lived would do in a situation like this. He also wasn't convinced that Harry had ever had to contend with a wizard like Zabini. He glanced to his left and right, at Crabbe and Goyle, hoping that they were better with their wands than their slow speech suggested.

They finally stopped at a door that didn't appear different from the doors they'd already passed. Holding the huge old book in one hand and his wand in the other, Zabini pointed his wand at Goyle, ordering him to open it before ordering Crabbe to lead the boys through the door. Zabini was the last to enter the dark chamber, flicking his wand as he did so. Teddy had felt a draft whirling around him the moment he'd stepped through the ancient-looking, metal-bound wooden door, and as serpentine magical torches sprang to life on the damp, roughly-carved walls, he saw that this was because of the sheer size of the chamber.

The only sounds in the huge underground cavern, which seemed to have been hewn from the solid rock a very long time ago, were their echoing footsteps and the hissing of water on the walls closest to the torches as the flames turned the moisture to steam. Teddy was glad that the torches were lit. If Goyle had walked forward with the boys three more steps they would have plummeted to the bottom of the cavern, which was lost in darkness. When they'd entered the chamber, some pebbles had become dislodged from the rocky ledge on which they stood and Teddy watched them fall over the edge, waiting for the sound that would tell him that they'd reached the bottom.

Silence.

The ledge on which they stood was exactly wide enough for two people to walk abreast. It clung to the cavern in a steep spiral and Teddy could see where the path continued one level below, but if it went farther down that was also lost in darkness.

"Walk, idiots!" Zabini snarled at Crabbe and Goyle. "Take the brats down. You first, Crabbe, and you behind, Goyle."

They obeyed wordlessly, marching single file down the spiralling ledge, more torches springing to life on the curving walls above their heads as they descended, accompanied by more hissing from the moisture coating the walls evaporating. It was as though they were descending into the bowels of the earth on the back of an enormous cobra, coiled against the perimeter of its basket. If Teddy closed his eyes for a second the hissing sounded convincingly serpent-like. But he didn't want to shut his eyes for more than a split second and risk coming too close to the edge of the precarious path. He peeked over his shoulder for a moment to see whether Goyle might be close enough to Zabini to push him over the edge but Zabini was keeping his distance from the rest of them, his wand out and ready for anything, even as he continued to grasp the old book under his left arm. _How on earth are they going to save us?_ Zabini seemed far too in-control for that to be possible.

Teddy wasn't certain how long they'd been descending when something finally hove into view in the middle of the large open area in the centre of the chamber. It appeared to be an island, if the emptiness between it and the path could be considered a small sea. As they drew closer, Teddy saw that it held nothing but a long table that looked disconcertingly like an altar, and there was precious little space to walk or stand around this table. There also didn't appear to be any sort of bridge connecting the perimeter path to the altar. Teddy hated to think what would happen if someone tried to leap across the distance and miscalculated.

When they had drawn level with the rocky platform, Teddy could see that it was not thrusting up from the floor of the cavern, wherever that was, but was _floating_ in space. He looked at Zabini, standing a good three meters behind Goyle, searching for some clue in his face as to what he intended, something that could tell Teddy how the five of them—two borderline but well-intentioned idiots and three unarmed children—could overpower him.

He looked at Goyle, then at the platform, and mouthed the words, _What now_?

"Pay attention there!" Zabini barked. He waved his wand at Julian and Nate; they were pulled to the wall, pinned there by Zabini's spell, spread-eagled. "You two will have your turn, don't worry," he said, his mouth twisting with amusement. Turning to Crabbe and Goyle, he pointed at their shoes with his wand, evidently putting a non-verbal spell on them before saying, "Put Potter's bastard on the altar."

Crabbe and Goyle looked at each other uncertainly, as though also at a loss for how they were going to rescue anyone. They gazed down at Teddy, their faces helpless and apologetic. Teddy glanced back and forth between the two of them, his stomach in knots. It wasn't going to work. It didn't matter that Crabbe and Goyle were on their side. They were equally helpless before Zabini.

The two hulking wizards each picked up one of Teddy's arms, suspending him between them. His mouth immediately leapt into his throat when, in unison, they stepped off the edge of the walkway and into the space between the path and the floating platform. To Teddy's surprise, they didn't plummet to their deaths, or to their eternal boredom, falling endlessly down what seemed to be a bottomless chasm. Instead, Crabbe's and Goyle's footsteps were slightly buoyed on the empty air, as if they were balloon-shod. Teddy tried to reach down with his own feet, to see whether he could feel the same spongy surface on which they were walking; there was nothing but air beneath his trainers. Only his two reluctant assistants were safe from falling. If they released him he would immediately drop.

When they reached the platform, Crabbe and Goyle loosened their grip on his arms, which had been quite painful, but Teddy didn't mind too much as it had meant not dying. Yet. They eased up on the pressure on his arms and he looked up at each of them, whispering, "Thanks."

Goyle grimaced. " _Sorry, kid_ ," he said softly. " _Don't know what else we can do. Zabini's—well, he's a lot more—and we're just—_ "

Teddy nodded. "It's not your fault." He tried to think more about the position _they_ were in than his own situation, because if he thought about what was about to happen to _him_ he'd run the risk of wetting himself from fear, and he didn't want to give Zabini that satisfaction. Instead he thought about how it would feel to try to rescue someone and fail. Of course, that was what had happened to him with regard to Nate and Julian, but he tried not to focus on that, either.

"So, now you know why you are here, and that Draco Malfoy was with your mother," he said to Nate and Julian, "not Percy Weasley. You also know that Malfoy was delusional enough to think that I was planning to make him the next great Dark Lord," Zabini said in his smooth, oddly persuasive voice, the words ringing against the hard stone of the chamber. Teddy found it very hard not to listen to him, not to _want_ to listen to him, to want to hear what he had to say next. "I knew that this house was where the book was likely to be that held the secret to my future success," he added, nodding at the ancient tome he'd been carrying. "I wasn't wrong, but the trick was gaining access to it. I _could_ simply have overpowered Draco's mother, killing her and ransacking the place. However, I knew that it would be far better to have help, not to mention a convenient patsy in Draco.

"As you guessed, I wasn't particularly fussed when you were arrested by the Ministry," he went on, speaking to Crabbe and Goyle now, "as I had told you to tell anyone who asked that the plan was to make your old friend Malfoy a great Dark Wizard. I admit that I didn't count on Weasley's slag trying to martyr herself, but it's good to have you back, Crabbe and Goyle. Especially as you did _not_ tell the Ministry that Malfoy was the one behind it all and thus need to be punished."

Crabbe and Goyle stared at Zabini with open mouths, making them appear, if possible, even dimmer than usual. Zabini's laugh was deep and resonant, filling the chamber. "Did you think I bought that nonsense about our Miss Clearwater helping you to escape so she could see her _widdle boys one last time before their deaths_?" he said, distorting his mouth into a pout and using a rather annoying, babyish voice that reminded Teddy of the way Harry had said Bellatrix Lestrange used to taunt him and Uncle Neville.

Zabini waved his wand again, pointing once more at Crabbe's and Goyle's feet. They clearly felt the effect immediately, bouncing up and down on the balls of their feet—or trying to, but finding that the buoyancy had left them. Teddy knew that the spell had been removed that had allowed them to walk across the empty air. If they stepped off the rocky platform now they would simply fall. All three of them were trapped.

Zabini laughed again. This time Teddy shook himself crossly, feeling as though he had come out of a strange waking-sleep. The world was _clearer_ somehow, sharper. He no longer felt mesmerised by Zabini, compelled to hang on his every word. Instead he saw Zabini for what he was: a madman. As the maniacal laughter continued, Teddy could only stare incredulously.

"Are you for real?" Teddy said before he could stop the words coming out of his mouth.

Zabini's laughter stopped abruptly. In a split second he had raised his wand and pointed it at Teddy, whose body was completely and utterly consumed by pain more quickly than he could speak or think, pulling a scream from his throat that he never knew was in him. He threw off Crabbe's and Goyle's hands, writhing, falling backward toward the stone table, against which he struck his head. The pain from that was nothing, however, compared to the sensation of every cell in his body catching fire and being stabbed with a very sharp knife simultaneously. Teddy had never imagined that he could want death, but he wanted death now, he wanted anything other than this unbelievable agony…

When it abruptly stopped the jolt was very nearly as painful as when it had begun. Teddy lay on the platform, panting, staring into the darkness above him, swallowing to ease his raw throat, not wanting to sit up and see Nate and Julian. He'd never felt so ashamed. They'd witnessed him losing control, though they didn't know that he had wished for death to end his suffering. For them to know that would be worse.

"Sit up," Zabini ordered him, and suddenly Teddy found himself doing so, as if pulled by an invisible string. He met Zabini's eyes, realising that the man had used another spell to do this. Crabbe and Goyle had been thrown to the edges of the platform—by him?—and looked terrified, slowly inching their way toward the centre, lying on their stomachs and pulling themselves forward, sweat running down their faces.

"I think, young Potter, that you'll find that I am very, very real," Zabini snarled, his dark eyes maniacally focussed and cruel. "You'll very likely find me to be _particularly_ real when I take your magic from you and add your power to my own."

Teddy took a deep shuddering breath and said, "My name isn't Potter. It's Harrison. And I think you're the most ridiculous person I've ever met."

Zabini's face darkened with anger as he pointed his wand at Teddy again.

#/#/#

"Weatherby!"

Percy stopped his pacing. He'd been trying once more, unsuccessfully, to leave the house, but every time he tried to step toward the kitchen door he suddenly felt the urge to scrub the sink, or polish the floor, or black the stove, or reorganize the silver. Each time he managed to stop in disgust, but this meant that there were myriad unfinished kitchen tasks piled around him and still he could not leave the Malfoy house, to his utter frustration.

Pansy entered the room slowly, dragging Draco Malfoy, holding him under his arms, his shoes' heels creating black trails on the half-polished floor.

" _Betray… Zabini… traitor_..." Malfoy mumbled as Pansy struggled to drag him to a chair. Percy ran to help her, but Malfoy's body didn't want to stay in a sitting position and he kept falling to one side or the other. Finally, Percy tucked the chair under the kitchen table and put Malfoy's head down on the scrubbed wooden surface, turned to one side so he could breathe. Pansy looked desperate about his condition and Percy wondered why she hadn't simply levitated his body until he remembered that he had her wand and she possessed only a useless wooden spoon handle.

"What happened?" he asked, peering at Malfoy's disoriented face.

"I found him in the drawing room. He'd been knocked out and was lying in a heap on the floor!" Pansy whined, rounding on Draco Malfoy and putting her arms around his shoulders. Percy watched her for a long moment before making a decision. "Don't just stand there, Weatherby! Do something!" she barked half-heartedly, still with a whine in her voice.

Percy sighed. "Please stop calling me that. I—I haven't been completely honest with you. I know that I'm not a Muggle called Weatherby. I know that I'm Percy Weasley and I know what Zabini and Draco Malfoy are up to. It doesn't surprise me that Zabini turned on Malfoy. I wouldn't have trusted him for a minute. I think he used Malfoy—er, Draco, to get what he wanted. But I can't help you unless the charm on me is lifted. I can't leave the house. If I help you to revive Draco he needs to take the spell off me after that. And then we'll see about rescuing the children and convincing the Ministry to show leniency to the pair of you for helping them catch Zabini."

Pansy straightened up and stared. "What are you talking about? What children? And how long have you been pretending? You let me—" she started to say before stopping and turning deep red. Swallowing, she looked at Draco and said, "All right, whatever you say, just help me. I don't know what I'd do if I lost him again."

He could see the genuine affection in her expression as she regarded the helpless Draco and he nodded, running around the kitchen to fetch various ingredients that he knew would result in a revivifying potion. He put a small cauldron on the cooker and lit the fire under it, adding the ingredients a little at a time, very carefully, filling her in on the kidnapping of the children as he did so, as she had evidently been kept in the dark about this.

" _Jus' call me 'Daddy'_ …" Draco said when she confessed that she'd known that Draco had been pretending to be Nate's father. Percy nodded again and decided not to bring up Draco sleeping with Penelope, as he needed her to continue to feel charitably toward Draco. He also didn't want to dwell on that so that _he_ would continue to want to help Draco. He didn't tell her that he was in possession of her wand, either. When the potion was ready she helped him prop up Draco's head, giving him a small taste of the concoction from a teacup. Draco grimaced and clamped his mouth shut, his eyes squeezed into slits.

" _What that_?" he mumbled. Pansy tried to coax him to drink a little more, but after only a drop or two had passed his lips he sat up significantly straighter and opened his eyes. " _Tryin' poison me_?" he slurred suspiciously, his eyes moving back and forth slowly between Percy and Pansy. Percy wasn't certain whether it was the potion or the desire to avoid having more of it that was reviving him.

"Would you rather have some tea?" Percy offered. His head in his hands, Draco managed to nod. While the kettle came to a boil, Draco had progressed to holding his head up unassisted. He peered into the cup of potion and shuddered.

"No drinking anymore," he said, pushing it away.

"No, no," Pansy agreed, tossing the cup into the sink. It shattered, gooey greenish-brown potion spattering the sink's interior. Percy winced. "Of course you don't need to drink that, Draco, dear. You're awake now. How do you feel? How's your head? Can you tell us what happened?"

Draco explained, haltingly, that Zabini had never been planning for Draco to be the next great Dark Lord. He wanted all of the power for himself. He'd just been using Draco, and his mother. Percy noticed that Draco didn't mention the children nor the theft of their power.

"Disarmed me," Draco said as Percy poured hot water into the teapot. "Probably kill me when he has a free moment."

"Or just let you take the blame for it all at the Ministry," Percy said grimly, taking a seat across the table from him while waiting for the tea to steep. "But that doesn't have to happen. I can go to get help, and you can recover properly at St Mungo's and then give evidence against Zabini. Just take the charm off me, so I can leave the house."

Draco's eyes were coming into focus now. He stared at Percy, as though seeing him for the first time. " _Weatherby_? What in Merlin's name?"

Percy grimaced. "I've known for quite some time that I'm Percy Weasley. I also know that you've been impersonating me, but the Ministry will probably overlook that if you help them catch Zabini. Do that and they'll probably let everything else pass, even the escape from Azkaban, as that wasn't your idea."

Draco continued to stare. Suddenly he exclaimed, "Bloody hell!" and slapped himself on the brow. "How long've you known?"

Percy shrugged. "I don't even remember how long now. Listen, are you going to take the spell off me or not? We need to get Aurors here to sort out Zabini."

Pansy glanced nervously at Draco. "I don't think that's possible. For one of us to take the spell off you, I mean. I think I remember Draco telling me that Blaise is the one who put it on you, so either he needs to take it off you voluntarily, or—"

"—if he dies, it'll die with him," Draco said listlessly. Pansy was grim and tight-lipped. Percy felt as though he'd been stabbed with an icicle. _Trapped_. He'd be trapped here forever if Zabini somehow got away or didn't take the spell off him.

#/#/#

"When I have the power of the five of you, I shall be six times more powerful than any other wizard in the world!" Zabini proclaimed, his words echoing around the cavern. "And then how difficult do you think I will find it to acquire other innocent children whose power I can also take?"

Teddy lay on the stone next to the altar-like table. "But—you don't know what having that sort of power will do to you," he said, stalling for time. "Maybe human beings aren't meant to have that much power. Maybe it'll kill you or make you self-destruct or something. You don't know."

As Zabini laughed, Teddy whispered to Crabbe and Goyle out of the corner of his mouth. " _Can't you two do anything? Stun him, at least?_ "

"Those two couldn't stun a crippled salamander," Zabini said, pointing his wand at the three of them, "much less _me_. And you seem not to realise that the acoustics are excellent in here, young Potter."

" _Harrison_ ," Teddy said again through gritted teeth. "My name is Theodore _Harrison_ , my grandfather was James _Harrison_ , my mother is Matilda _Harrison_ …"

"All of that hardly matters," Zabini said, flicking this information away carelessly, "as you'll be dead as soon as I can take your power. However, I think I'll warm up on one of your friends…"

Teddy looked desperately at where Julian and Nate were pinned helplessly to the chamber wall. "No! Leave Julian and Nate alone! If you want to take my power, take it, but—"

Zabini laughed that very disturbing laugh again. "Idiot! I wasn't talking about _them_. I meant the two beside you there. Which shall it be?" he mused, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth as he looked at Crabbe and Goyle. The pair lost all colour in their faces and looked at each other with wide eyes.

Suddenly, Goyle pointed at Crabbe and said, "Him! Take him! I won't do you no good, I was with Millicent Bulstrode once, in seventh year."

Zabini threw back his head and laughed. Teddy frowned. It really _was_ as though Zabini were trying to adhere to all of the Evil Overlord clichés. "You expect me to believe that? Very well. You may thank Goyle, Crabbe, for— _saving_ you. Well, temporarily, at any rate, as I am still going to take your power. Because he tried to give up his best friend, he will have the honour of going first. Get on the table," Zabini ordered Goyle, who stared at him, open-mouthed, otherwise not moving. "I said _get on the table!_ " Zabini repeated, his face turning red. "Or would you like a taste of the Cruciatus Curse as well? The kid withstood it, but somehow I don't think you'll do as well."

Goyle immediately scrambled for the table and lay down on it. He seemed very nervous, and Teddy suspected that he hadn't actually been with the girl called Millicent at all. "Does—does the spell kill me?"

"No, idiot, the Killing Curse does that, _after_ I take your power. Be still! Let me concentrate," he said, opening the large tome he'd been carrying. With a wave of his wand he caused the book to float in mid-air, as if it were on an invisible lectern.

They all seemed to be holding their breaths. When Zabini lifted his wand, Goyle turned his head and whispered to Crabbe, "I'm sorry, mate. I—I can't excuse what I done. But I'm sorry."

Teddy gazed at Crabbe, who nodded at his friend, his mouth drawn into a line, knowing that he was going to be next. Teddy saw again the grim resignation on Goyle's face. _It doesn't matter that they failed to save us. They came back anyway, knowing it was risky, knowing they could fail. They could have been safe in prison but now they're going to lose their power—and their lives—because they wanted to do the right thing._

As Zabini started to speak, Teddy slipped from Crabbe's grasp.

" _Nooo_!" he cried. Teddy threw himself in front of Goyle as Zabini finished speaking and a crackling orange light from his wand arced across the space between him and the rocky island, striking Teddy full in the chest.

#/#/#

Percy thought about being trapped in the Malfoy house forever, wishing Mrs. Malfoy had never found him in Gibraltar, where he had had a quiet, uneventful life as a Muggle.

" _Help… help me, please_ …"

Percy's head whipped around. "Who's that? Do you think one of the kids got away from him?" He ran for the kitchen door, fumbling in his pocket for Pansy's wand but reluctant to take it out in her presence. Pansy started to follow, but when Draco attempted to stand, his legs folded under him and he fell to the floor in a limp heap, causing Pansy to round on him, crying out in concern. Percy felt both irritated with them and glad that he might be on his own and able to use the wand without their witnessing it.

"Pansy, take care of Draco. I'll find out who was calling for help."

"But you're unarmed!" Pansy exclaimed. "You might know that you're _not_ a Muggle, but you might as well _be_ one without a wand!"

He didn't feel like correcting her about his being armed, so he grabbed a heavy cast-iron pan hanging from a rack next to the cooker and brandished it as if it were a tennis racket. "It may not be a wand, but you can't say that I'm not armed. Take care of him," he added, nodding at where Draco lay crumpled on the floor yet, scrabbling impotently for the table to pull himself up.

He ran into the corridor, uncertain about where the voice had come from. Was it the drawing room? No, Pansy had retrieved Draco from the drawing room and would have seen another person in there. As he drew closer to the dining room he heard the faint cry again and he put his left hand on the knob, iron pan in his right, ready for whatever he might find.

"Penny!" he cried as soon as he had swung open the door, dropping the pan onto the table as he ran to where she was bound to a chair with magical ropes. He took out Pansy's wand and removed the ropes, then pulled her into his arms. She recoiled, however, and looked at him strangely.

"What? Why are you—? Draco, I know it's you, that you're still impersonating Percy. You can stop pretending."

"No, Penny! It really is me!" he said desperately, grasping her arms and casting about for how to convince her. "Draco Malfoy is in the kitchen with Pansy Parkinson. Zabini disarmed him and knocked him out and Draco knows that he was just a pawn in Zabini's plans all along. So was I. They found me in Gibraltar and brought me back here so that I could provide them with hair to put into Polyjuice Potion, so Malfoy could impersonate me and gain the trust of my sister and brothers and parents and you and the kids. It was all so that Zabini could steal the children's power!"

She nodded, tears in her eyes. "Yes, I know, that's why I'm here. To try to do something about the children. I got your owl." She slid her left arm around his neck and lightly touched his unshaven cheek with her right hand. "It _is_ you, isn't it?" she whispered in wonder.

Percy could contain himself no longer. He gazed at her only a second longer before pulling her to him and kissing her at last, holding her as tightly as he dared, feeling her thin frame tremble in his arms as she returned the kiss and twined her arms around him. He ran his lips down her jaw and neck, murmuring, " _I've missed you so much, Penny, so much_..."

She sobbed into his neck, finally managing to say, "It never—it never felt right, being with anyone else…and then when you came back, it didn't feel right being with you, either, but that wasn't really you…"

"No, it wasn't. This is me," he whispered, bringing his mouth to hers again, caressing her back and relishing the solid reality of her. She continued to cry as she kissed him, holding his face with both hands, then pulling back to gaze at him with wonder in her eyes.

"I should have known. I should have known it wasn't you. I'm so sorry, Percy. I should have known."

He pulled her to him again, putting his cheek on her hair. "Don't fret over that, Penny. Why would you have thought it was anyone but me? Don't blame yourself. It's over."

"But—but if I'd worked out that it wasn't you, he couldn't have taken the children…"

He snorted. "No, it just would have been more difficult for him to take them. And if you should have worked it out then shouldn't my own _parents_ have known? Or my brothers and sister? Did Malfoy ever come into contact with Hermione Granger? Surely _she_ should have noticed it wasn't me. Don't be so hard on yourself, Penny. Of _course_ you all thought it was me. What else were you to think?" he said, smiling at her and cradling her face in his hands.

"I—I have something to tell you, though," she said haltingly. "I have another son. Julian. He's—he's—"

"Severus Snape's son."

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	51. Reunion

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Fifty-One**

 **Reunion**

 **#/#/#**

Penelope reddened and looked down.

"Yes," she said to the floor. "My younger son's father is Severus Snape. I—I'm not sure whether I can explain why—why—"

"I overheard Malfoy telling Pansy about it. He was, erm, convincing her that the idea of touching you after you'd been with Snape was horrifying to him," Percy said quickly, feeling awkward. "Although, I _have_ wondered…" He couldn't help it; he was as perplexed as Malfoy. "I mean— _Snape_?"

She lifted her face again and he could see the old defiance behind her eyes. "Yes, Severus Snape. Because—because he reminded me a bit of _you_ , Percy. Oh, not your looks," she said hastily, when his brows knit together in confusion. "I mean—you were both spies during the war. You let a lot of people think you were horrid in order to keep your cover. You risked a lot—you risked _everything_ , without thinking of the cost." She sighed and leaned her cheek on his shoulder. "I know it sounds stupid, but what he did reminded me of you. I think that's why—I did something I hadn't done since the last time I'd been with you…"

He nodded miserably. "You slept with him. I understand how babies are made."

"No. I mean, yes, but—no. I hadn't exactly been a nun between the time you'd disappeared and when I started seeing Severus. Not after I'd got over the initial shock and learned that you'd disappeared without a trace. I was still waiting for you then, and even for a while afterward, sure that the Ministry had to be mistaken, that the Order had to have got the wrong end of the stick." She sniffed. "But then more and more time passed, and you didn't come back, and Harry had defeated him, You-Know-Who, and he was really gone for good. I had to accept the fact that you were, too. Gone for good. I had to get on with my life."

"Oh," Percy said, feeling stupid and also quite jealous, suddenly, of the other men who'd been with her. "Then—then what did you do with Snape that you hadn't done since the last time you'd been with me?"

"I purposefully left off using birth control," she admitted. "You didn't think my sons were _accidents_ , did you? I _am_ a witch, Percy. I know what I'm doing. I didn't know what was going to happen during the war. I wanted a bit of you to keep for myself. I didn't know yet about what you were doing. And with Severus… I had wanted another baby for a little while, a brother or sister for Nate, but no one seemed right. Then I started seeing Severus and he reminded me of you in so many ways, and he wasn't a Muggle, so I wouldn't need to explain why our child started exhibiting certain talents when he or she got older…" She sighed again. "I know it was terribly selfish of me. Both times. And I didn't consider at all that Severus would want to marry me, nor what it would be like for him to have a child he wasn't raising himself, most of the time, a child he could only see occasionally…"

Percy swallowed. "He proposed?"

Her mouth twisted. "Of course he did. Another thing that reminded me of _you_. He's a bit old-fashioned that way, is Severus. But I turned him down. My intention was never to get a husband, if it wasn't you. I just wanted another baby." She gazed up at him earnestly. "You're the only man I ever considered marrying. Being perpetually single never scared me." She looked grimly at the door. "But Zabini frightens me. It's as if he has no heart in him at all. He uses people and throws them away afterward. Look at poor Narcissa Malfoy over there," she added, pointing to the corner where the blonde woman was leaning as if she were an up-ended broom, her hair over her face. "She was shagging him, she agreed to let him use her house, she was completely his partner in crime, but does he care? He'll probably kill her when he gets the chance."

Percy nodded. "That's what Draco said about himself. Said that Zabini'll probably kill him when he has a spare moment." He turned again to Narcissa. "He really doesn't care. You're right."

"I think—I think I knew that even before I agreed to come here. I knew—I knew there was a very good chance that he would kill me, too." She gazed intently at him. "I know that I just got you back, but you have to understand—I really am prepared to die for my children. And now that Zabini's taken my wand, I'm defenceless."

Percy took a deep breath in through his nose. "I'm not letting anyone kill my son without a fight, and if that means I get killed too, so be it." He sighed, looking around. "I wish there were _any_ chance at all that we could succeed, but I don't see how. It's just you and me and Draco and Pansy, and they'd probably rather make a getaway than do anything to save the kids. Oh, sure, Draco would love to try to kill Zabini, I've no doubt, but only if he knew for certain that he'd succeed. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they've fled already. If Draco's up to Apparating again after being knocked out they might both be gone."

Penny had looked rather like she was trying to speak while he was rambling on and when he stopped talking she finally burst out, "But we're not alone! I brought help!" she said, smiling, taking a very squirmy grey mouse out of her pocket. "But—Zabini took my wand. I'll need you to take the Transfiguration spell off Shacklebolt."

" _Shacklebolt!_ " he cried in shock. "All right, put him on the table," he said, gathering his wits about him. He took out Pansy's wand and pointed it. A moment later a rather large, black, bald Auror was crouching on the table Percy had polished the previous afternoon. He seemed rather disorientated but quickly shook himself and jumped to the floor, stretching his arms and legs and grinning.

"Percy Weasley!" he exclaimed, grinning, shaking Percy's hand in his iron grip. Percy laughed, not caring that it felt as if Shacklebolt might take his arm off.

"Kingsley, you old rogue! I don't know when I've been so glad to see anyone, apart from Penny!" he admitted.

Shacklebolt cleared his throat and gave them both a sly look. "Yes, I know. I may have been a mouse, but I could overhear rather a lot of snogging from Penny's pocket…"

Penny turned a deep red colour. "I forgot you were in there," she said feebly. "You still have your wand?"

Shacklebolt whipped it out of the forearm-holster on his left arm and brandished it as if it were a conductor's baton. "At your service."

"Brilliant," Percy said, feeling breathless. "That's another wand we have, then. I wish Zabini hadn't taken Penny's."

"Ah, but I took a precaution. I have extras," he said, pulling two more wands out of his other sleeve. "I've learned from past experience that things can happen to wands during battles. It doesn't pay to assume that yours'll be all right. And we didn't expect you to have one, so—"

"Well, I didn't, but—" he started to say, brandishing Pansy's wand.

"So _that's_ where my wand went!" a shrill voice suddenly exclaimed. Percy's stomach felt like it had fallen into his shoes as he turned to see Draco and Pansy entering the dining room, Draco still extremely unsteady on his feet. Would Pansy still want to help them if she realised the subterfuge Percy had used to take her wand? "You know what I think?" she said, removing the spoon handle from her pocket. "I think Zabini very sneakily took my real wand and replaced it with this worthless thing. Wherever did you find it?" she asked Percy, her face rapturous as she threw the spoon handle aside and took the wand Percy handed her. Draco looked nervously at Shacklebolt, who surveyed him with his arms crossed, his wand clutched in his right fist. Draco nodded at him, giving him a small wave.

Percy hesitated only a moment before saying, "You know, I don't even recall, now. I meant to give it to you as soon as I saw you but then you came into the kitchen with Draco, after he'd been knocked out…"

Draco swallowed and looked at Penelope. "Erm, I don't think we've met," he said awkwardly. "I'm Draco Malfoy." He turned and spoke to Shacklebolt. "Zabini kidnapped me from Azkaban—"

"—on _my watch_ —" growled Shacklebolt.

"—and forced me to—"

"—impersonate Percy and kidnap twelve children?" Penelope said, her mouth twisting. "Yes, I know what happened. So now that Zabini's turned on you, whose side are you on?" she demanded, her hands on her hips.

"Erm," Draco said awkwardly. "Listen—sorry about, well, you know. I mean—"

"Yes," Percy said impatiently, resisting the urge to hex Draco. "We know what you mean. Are you with us or not? Helping to save the children and capture Zabini, if we can, or just looking out for yourself?"

Draco regarded the hulking Auror beside Percy with trepidation before saying, "Oh, erm, saving the children, of course. What else?" he added feebly, in a rather high voice.

"Should we trust him?" Shacklebolt asked Percy and Penelope, not taking his eyes off Draco.

Shacklebolt handed Percy a wand, which Percy kept trained on Draco. This served to make Draco look even more nervous. After regarding his impersonator for a long moment, Percy said, "I think we can trust him."

"Oh, wait!" Penny said, hitting herself on the brow. "We have other help as well! Crabbe and Goyle. They're on our side. They like the kids and don't want Zabini to hurt them."

"Well, _that_ makes sense, not _you_ being a traitor," Draco said to Penelope. "But—how is that help?" He looked doubtful. "They certainly didn't help when Zabini was disarming me. They've probably gone with him, taking the kids down to—"

"If they had helped you, wouldn't Zabini probably have killed them on the spot?" Penny countered. Percy saw that Draco was definitely more alert now. His brows knit together as he looked at his mother, still propped in the corner of the dining room.

"Possibly. Probably. All right, I'll need a wand. I'll take Mother's. I'm sure she won't mind. I know it responds well to me. First wand I learned spells with, when I was seven." He looked at Penny, Percy and Shacklebolt, whose mouths were hanging open. He snorted and said, "Come now, you lot are really shocked that my parents let me start doing magic before I went to school?" He shook his head and sneered at their collective naïveté, striding to where Narcissa still leaned against the wall. Taking his mother's wand out of her robe pocket, he revived her before any of them could stop him.

" _No!_ " Percy and Pansy cried together, appalled. _What the hell is he doing_? Percy wondered.

Narcissa Malfoy straightened up, blinking. "What's going on?" she said groggily. A moment later, however, she was fully in control of her faculties, staring incredulously at Kingsley Shacklebolt and groping in her pocket for her wand. "An Auror!" she cried, ripping the pocket in frustration, failing to find the wand. Upon seeing it in Draco's hand, she screamed shrilly, "Well, don't just stand there, Draco, hex him!"

When Draco did nothing but toss her wand carelessly into the air and catch it repeatedly, she tried to grab it from him, but he snatched it from the air too quickly for her and held it behind his back. "I'm afraid not, Mother. You see, I know that good old Blaise never had any intention of making me the next great Dark Lord. That's a title he wants for himself. Not that I was terribly interested in that, anyway. I just want to go away with Pansy, possibly to Gibraltar. I liked it there."

Narcissa paled, which was a good trick for her already pallid complexion. "You!" she cried, pointing accusingly at Pansy. "You're still here? Not gone yet?" She turned pleading eyes to her son. "Draco, darling, don't be ridiculous. Would I have done everything I have to allow Blaise to simply—"

"—set me up and let the Ministry think I was to blame for everything?" Draco said, his arms crossed on his chest, his mother's wand in his hand.

"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. Did _she_ tell you that?" Narcissa sneered at the younger woman. Pansy stood near the table, finally holding her real wand, looking like it was requiring a great effort not to hex Draco's mother. Draco saw this and sidled over to her, holding out his hand for her wand, which she reluctantly gave him. This did not shut up Narcissa Malfoy, however. "Oh, very nice. You need to disarm your whore to keep her from hexing your mother. Lovely choice, Draco. And what does she know, anyway? She still thinks she's good enough to be the consort of the next great Dark Lord."

It happened too quickly for anyone to do anything about it. Pansy picked up the cast-iron pan from the table, where Percy had left it. "Oh, shut up, you bitch," was all Pansy said before striking Narcissa on the head with the pan, knocking her out. Again.

#/#/#

Teddy gasped. The spell Zabini had cast on him seemed to control every nerve-ending, every muscle in his body. He felt himself rise into the air, connected to Zabini's wand by that thread of light, and he gazed at the man, his face draining of colour as he struggled to maintain his hold on the wand. Teddy was dimly aware of Julian and Nate screaming his name repeatedly and he felt tears running down his face as he remembered the first time he'd walked into Hogwarts, his first visit to Diagon Alley, the first time he picked up his grandfather's wand and it emitted sparks…

" _Aaaagh!_ " Zabini gasped, finally going to his knees, dropping his wand on the ledge where he was crouching. His face dripped with sweat and he looked around with unseeing eyes. His formerly handsome features were suddenly worn and ugly, criss-crossed with scars. He seemed to be the victim of botched cosmetic surgery. Teddy gasped at the change.

When the light that had connected him with Zabini collapsed he continued to float briefly before gently descending onto the rocky island again. Goyle sat up on the stone table, shaking his head sadly at Teddy. "Oh, lad, you shouldn'ta done that. I ain't worth it."

Teddy couldn't speak. He felt very odd, a strange electricity surging through his veins. "I—I—" He couldn't put into words how he felt. It defied logic, but he felt _more_ powerful than ever before, not less. He didn't know what to make of this. _Perhaps this is what it would have felt like all along to be a Muggle, or a Squib? Maybe they all feel this way._

"I mean," Goyle continued, "you're _Harry Potter's son_. It ain't right."

Goyle cried quietly and Teddy wanted to comfort him, to say, "It's okay, really, I feel fine." He did feel oddly all right, as though Zabini hadn't just sapped every last bit of magic from him. But then he remembered that Zabini had planned to kill him as soon as he'd taken his power, which meant—

"Stupid brat!" Zabini proclaimed, standing shakily and raising his wand, pointing it at Teddy. His lopsided, misshapen features contorted themselves into an ugly snarl. "How pointless! It'll be their turn in a minute, and then your friends here," he added, swinging his wand toward Julian and Nate. The pair of them were no longer pressed against the wall but crouched at the edge of the walkway, staring helplessly at Teddy. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"You've only sped up your own death. _Avada Kedavra_!"

Nothing happened. Teddy opened his eyes and stared at Zabini, who examined his wand, frowning. Zabini threw it onto the path. It bounced near the edge, nearly falling into the chasm. He pulled another wand from his robes. "That one must not be any good now that it's done the spell," he said, his voice shaking. It might have been Malfoy's wand, Teddy wasn't sure. Not only did Zabini's face seem more worn, his robes were threadbare and patchy where they had been immaculate, the heavy fabric somehow giving way to what appeared to be flimsy, wispy rags.

 _Serves him right,_ Teddy thought. _He may have my power now, but he's started disintegrating._ Teddy focussed on the wand pointed at him, trying to again muster the nerve to die, trying not to be frightened, to show anything other than a stubborn willfulness to his murderer. He was going to go out with dignity. He would neither beg for his life nor show fear. He wouldn't give Zabini the satisfaction. Zabini appeared to be killing _himself_ by acquiring more power, appearing more debilitated by the moment, as though his cells might cease to hang together soon. Teddy tried not to wish that that might happen before Zabini managed to kill him. He tried to resign himself to death.

Zabini's features contorted into a mask of hate and bile. " _Avada Kedavra_!" he cried again, but once more, nothing happened. He might as well have been holding a random twig.

A thought began to bloom in Teddy's mind, telling him what had very likely happened and why Zabini couldn't kill him. His heart thrummed painfully in his chest, echoing in his ears as he raised his hands, concentrating on the wand Zabini still held and the one he'd thrown down. He felt power surge within him. Could he do this? If he failed he was no worse off than he had been. There was only one way to find out.

" _Accio wands!_ " he cried. The wand by Zabini's feet immediately flew through the air to Teddy, followed by Malfoy's wand, which had still been in Zabini's hand, who released it as though it had burnt him. Teddy caught Zabini's wand in his right hand and Malfoy's in his left. He stared at the wands in amazement, then looked up at Zabini, who was furious, rage mangling his already-twisted features so that he seemed barely human. Teddy was no longer afraid of him. He didn't need to be. He knew what had happened, what Zabini had really done.

He grinned at Crabbe and Goyle, then Julian and Nate, who whooped and slapped each other on the back gleefully. Teddy grinned at the wands in his hands again, up at Zabini, then back at the wands once more.

"Cool!"

#/#/#

"Percy!" Penelope cried, trying to support him as he collapsed against her. "What's wrong?"

They had left the dining room and were walking toward the drawing room with Shacklebolt, Pansy and Draco, each of them with a wand at the ready. Percy's knees seemed to have given way and he sagged momentarily, as though _he_ were the one struck by a cast-iron pan, not Narcissa Malfoy, who still lay prostrate in the dining room. Draco Malfoy had laughed and kissed Pansy after she'd knocked out his mother.

"Don't—know—" Percy gasped. After a moment he was able to stand again. He shook himself, looking around, feeling as if his head had been wound about with gauze but now he was without it, able to see clearly, able to think clearly and act without restriction. He thought about leaving the house and, to his surprise and delight, he didn't immediately get the urge to polish the silver, clean all seven bathtubs, or take a feather duster to all of the fiddly mouldings in the house. He laughed, a smile creeping across his face. "I think everything's going to be all right. Zabini must be dead."

The other four gawped at him in confusion. "What?" Pansy said, incredulous. "How could you know?"

"Because I felt the charm lift. I'm no longer bound by it. Whatever he did to me, it must work differently on humans than on elves. You said that he'd probably have to die for the spell to be lifted—and I think it is!"

The others were immediately more cheerful about going to the drawing room. "Well, come on, then, let's get the kids!" Penny cried, pulling Percy toward the door. They entered together and Draco and Shacklebolt lifted up the trap door.

#/#/#

At first the reunion between Teddy, Nate, Julian, the adults and the other children outside the Malfoy house was a bit confusing. Arms were flung about heedlessly as one hug after another was exchanged between reunited parents and children, resulting in some people being struck in the nose and about the head, but no one minded. Harry could tell that Teddy was thrilled to see Ginny, who made him blush when she hugged him. Arthur, Bill, Fleur and the others had finally broken through the various defences around the Malfoy house, so Bill and Fleur were pulling Marguerite to them; Neville and Hermione were crushing Frances between them; and Ron, Luna and their children were a tangle of celebratory limbs. Arthur took turns hugging any of his grandchildren who weren't already embraced by their parents. While Ginny hugged the twins and swept up Charlotte into her arms, Harry pumped Teddy's hand before giving up on being stoic, hugging him closely and whispering, " _I thought I'd never see you again…_ "

It was very confusing until they'd removed all of the Disillusionment Charms and everyone could be seen properly. Percy, Penelope, Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson had come out of the house with the boys, but weren't moving as quickly as the youngsters. As soon as Harry saw the boys come round the corner of the house he had sent up a cry and the three boys had hurtled forward. Harry quickly realised that this was because Penelope had probably told them that they were waiting outside. As Draco and Pansy came nearer, however, Neville advanced upon them and sternly confiscated their wands, keeping his wand trained on Draco, his jaw clenched.

Arthur pushed through the crowd, making his way toward Percy. He pushed his fingers through what was left of the still-red fringe around the perimeter of his pate, a habit Harry had never realised that Ron got from his dad. He seemed uncertain for a moment, as if afraid of being wrong again. Percy gave him a small smile and nodded.

"I never should have said that you were wrong to speak to the press about what happened at the World Cup without asking your supervisor first," Percy said sheepishly.

Arthur was crying in earnest now, tears rolling down his face so that he had to remove his spectacles for a moment to wipe his eyes. "Well, it only took you eighteen years to admit it," he said with a choke in his voice before pulling Percy to his chest in a fierce hug. Somehow Harry couldn't imagine that Draco Malfoy would have known about the World Cup row. Even apart from the fact that Malfoy was standing nearby, they were clearly finally seeing the real Percy.

Ginny was holding Charlotte tightly, the toddler's head drooping on her shoulder, but when she saw the reunion between her father and brother, she had to bury her head in Harry's chest, sobbing. Charlotte complained that they were 'squinching' her between them. Bill stepped toward Percy with his arms around Fleur and Marguerite. "Perce—it's good to have you back," he said with a break in his voice that sounded just like Arthur's. "You may not remember my wife—"

"—but I remember you," Fleur said, extending her hand delicately to Percy, so that he could kiss it. He took the hint flawlessly. "From ze Triwizard Tournament. You were very concerned about your bruzzer being in ze lake…"

"—and you were very concerned about your sister," he countered, peering quizzically at Marguerite, who, Harry realised suddenly, was the spitting image of her aunt when she was a child, if a little taller.

"This is our daughter, Marguerite," Bill told him. Percy nodded at her, smiling.

"As pretty as your mother," Percy told her, making her blush.

Ron was wrestling with his boys a few feet away while Luna stood by serenely, holding Diana against her shoulder. Diana had the same calm expression as her mother, surveying her brothers without judgment as they climbed all over their father.

"Oi!" Ron cried. "We've talked about that! No hair-pulling! I have all of my hair yet and I want to keep it as long as I can."

He stood slowly, Hal hanging on his back and Cedric under one arm. Young Percy scrambled to his feet and found himself looking straight up at his Uncle Percy. "Hullo!" he piped. "I'm your namesake!" He held out a hand that was black with dirt. "How'ja do? I'm called Percy Weasley."

Percy grinned and took the very dirty hand being offered. "So am I called Percy Weasley. Nice to meet you." He shook his head at Ron, who couldn't hug Percy or shake his hand for understandable reasons. "Of all people, Ron…a namesake from _you_. I never thought…"

Ron's ears turned dark red. "It's nothing. You know how it is. Thought you'd bit the dust," he explained with a shrug, looking deeply embarrassed. Harry stepped forward, holding Ginny's hand, and clapped his other hand on Percy's shoulder.

"Turns out I didn't need to bite the dust in order to get a namesake," Harry said, grinning.

"Right," Ron agreed, recovering from his embarrassment. "We have both a little Percy and a little Harry. But we call him Hal, to avoid confusion. Do you know how many little wizards were given the name _Harry_ —"

"—and _Harriet_ —" Harry added, rolling his eyes.

"—and Harriet in the first few years after You-Know-Who was defeated? Harry's got to teach them now. He dreads reading off the names on the register. It's all Harry-this and Harriet-that. We had no idea when Hal was born or we might have tried to think of a different name. No offence, mate," he said, turning to Harry, who held up both hands to indicate that he wasn't about to take offence at such a thing.

"And your other son?" Percy asked quietly, nodding at him.

"Cedric," Harry whispered, watching the happy little boy play on his father.

Percy drew his mouth into a line. "Good choice," he said quickly, making no further jokes about needing to die to have a namesake.

To end the awkward silence, Ron snorted. "Well, you know, Harry was a champion and Cedric was a champion. I definitely wasn't about to suggest that we call him _Viktor_." The other adults laughed as Harry saw Ron's eyes slide over to where Hermione was holding Frances very tightly. Neville was close to them, still keeping his wand on Draco and Pansy. He was clearly enjoying himself a great deal and Malfoy was trying to placate him.

"Have I ever mentioned, Longbottom, how surprised I was that you'd become an Auror? Er, wait, that wasn't what I meant. I mean, no one should have been surprised, should they? No, not about good old Neville Longbottom," Malfoy said with a falsely jovial chuckle, his voice abnormally high. "Auror material from his first day at Hogwarts, that's what I always said," he added, keeping a very wary eye on the end of Neville's wand.

Ginny had finally recovered; she placed Charlotte in Harry's arms so that she could give Percy a proper hug.

"I can't believe it's really you at last, Percy," she whispered.

"I can," Luna said suddenly, her large blue eyes rather eerie in the moonlight. "He hasn't pinched my bottom. I didn't like to say anything because I assumed it had to do with the memory problem, but now I reckon I should have done."

"Yes," Ginny agreed, folding her arms and glaring at Draco Malfoy. Harry, Ron and Pansy joined in the glaring. "I refrained from saying anything for the same reason."

Malfoy smiled feebly and looked nervously at them all. Luna seemed not to care so he didn't bother with her. "Well, you know, it was an _act_. That's all. I was supposed to have amnesia. You all believed I did, didn't you?" He seemed most nervous about the glare Pansy was giving him, which made Harry want to laugh, despite having just found out about Malfoy's wandering hands and despite the fact that they had wandered on his wife's bottom.

"Erm, I don't believe I've been properly introduced to your charming wife," Percy said, turning back to Ron, the corners of his mouth twitching. "If we've met, I don't remem—"

"Oh, no, you wouldn't remember me, not unless you recall when I was in second year and you were Head Boy and you told off some boys in my house for taking my things. You'd caught them with stuff that had my name on it, although the books only said 'L. Lovegood' in them and you might not remember that, which is why I never did understand everyone saying that you ought to take your wand out of your bum, because I saw you take your wand out of your robes many times, and it never seemed to me as if you were keeping it in your bum. I thought you were a good Head Boy and prefect, too, I didn't care what everybody else was saying. You had a lot on your mind, didn't you? You thought Sirius Black was trying to get into the castle to commit murder, and, all right, it turns out he really _was_ , but he wasn't trying to kill Harry or Ron, not really, and you couldn't have known that he was trying to kill your old rat who had become Ron's rat and wasn't really a rat at all but an illegal Animagus, although I suppose it's possible that you might have wondered once or twice about why he was living for so long. I reckon you thought he was a _magic_ rat, which he _was_ , in a way, so you can't really be blamed for that, although Rita Skeeter did blame you once in an article in the _Prophet_. I think she was just cross because Ron had beaten her to an exclusive interview with the Keeper for the Appleby Arrows, who'd just won the League Cup after nearly winning for the previous three years and losing each time to the Ballycastle Bats, whose Keeper is Appleby's Keeper's twin brother, which is something that made it a very interesting story and helped to sell twice as many issues of the _Quibbler_ as we usually do."

Percy's mouth hung open as if he might respond, were he able to think of anything appropriate, which seemed unlikely.

"Good," Penelope said suddenly. "Glad to hear it," she added a little too loudly, as she might speak to someone who was hard-of-hearing, touched in the head, or both. She and Percy looked at each other as if sharing a secret joke and Harry nudged Ginny, putting his mouth very close to her ear.

"Look at them," he whispered. "Much more like the old Penny and Percy, wouldn't you say?"

Ginny gave him a teary smile and nodded. The reunion was suddenly interrupted, however, by Kingsley Shacklebolt emerging from the house with Zabini at wandpoint. Snape followed, levitating the unconscious form of Narcissa Malfoy and carrying an enormously unwieldy book. Crabbe and Goyle brought up the rear.

Snape and Percy nodded politely to each other, though Harry saw Percy flex his fingers on his wand while Penelope looked away, ducking her head and pulling her sons close to her. Snape appeared vaguely guilty, as if he might even offer an apology to Percy but was afraid of making the sun rise in the south and turning the sky green.

"Would you believe it?" Shacklebolt said, nodding at Zabini. "Claims he isn't to blame for any of this, says his son has had him under Imperius and forced him to impersonate him."

"Ridiculous!" Draco Malfoy exclaimed. "Anyone can see that that is Blaise Zab—" He peered more closely at the damaged face of the man before him. "Who the bloody hell are _you_?"

"Dad?" Teddy said to Harry suddenly. "Do you have to be a witch or wizard to use potions? To use something like—Polyjuice Potion?"

Harry shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I believe that is the case, but that might be a better question for your stepfather," Harry admitted, looking reluctantly to Snape, who raised one brow in surprise but obligingly answered Teddy's question, going into his best professor voice to do so.

"Most potions require a magical person, yes," Snape told him. "There are a few old recipes that can affect Muggles and Squibs, but Polyjuice requires the imbiber—the person drinking it—to be magical as well. When the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was passed in 1692, our Ministry passed a law requiring all potions to be reformulated so that the persons making and using them had to be magical. In the end it wasn't possible for all potions to be thus altered, and it's a good thing that that is true of Wolfsbane Potion, because most werewolves are not wizards, but the intention was to put an end to wizards trafficking in potions in Muggle villages, especially love potions. Veritaserum is another potion that works on both wizards and Muggles." he added, motioning with his head to Zabini and holding up a small, clear, empty vial. Harry nodded in understanding but didn't say anything else about this, turning instead to Teddy again.

"Why do you ask, Teddy?" Harry wanted to know.

"Because—well—I don't think he's a wizard anymore," he said, pointing at Zabini. "At the moment when he—when I think he stopped being one—he started to look like _this_. I think he was using a potion to look like someone else. And he couldn't anymore once he lost his magic."

" _Lost his magic_?" Harry, Ginny and Ron said together.

"But—he was trying to _take_ your magic," Harry said, confused. "How did he end up _losing_ his?"

"That explains it!" Hermione said excitedly. "Why the concealment charms and other protections on the property suddenly stopped working. He'd lost his magic and the spells ended!"

Harry stared. "Is that what happened? How you all got through?"

Ginny nodded. "That wall of snakes? It completely disappeared. The snakes just vanished into the air. They weren't even enchanted snakes. They were conjured, none of them real. I didn't even need to worry about what to do with snakes that weren't enchanted once that happened."

Harry frowned; something was still striking him as strange. "But if he isn't Blaise Zabini, who is he? And where's the real one?"

"Oh, that's Blaise Zabini, all right," Arthur said thoughtfully, squinting at the confused-looking man. "Blaise Zabini, Senior. I haven't seen him in years. One of my first raids, when I was just a lad, fresh out of school. But I reckon this _is_ how he'd appear by now, with no disguises or potions. He was already getting on in years when Blaise, Junior was born—over sixty years old, I should say."

"Why don't we revive Narcissa, to see whether she can shed some light on this?" Penelope suggested, frowning at, evidently, the father of the Blaise Zabini they'd all thought was behind the kidnapping plot.

Arthur nodded at Snape. "That's probably wise. You know what to do, Severus."

But as Snape lifted his wand, Pansy Parkinson suddenly said, "Wait! Just so you know—she isn't stunned. I, erm, hit her on the head. With a cast-iron pan. So she—she might have concussion." Harry thought Pansy was trying to refrain from laughing; the edges of her mouth kept turning up.

"Very well, then," Arthur said, nodding at Snape again. Snape waved his wand and Narcissa's body sank slowly to the ground. After he moved it again she put her hand to her head and tried to sit up, groaning.

" _Ooooooh_ , what hap— _you_ ," she growled as soon as she opened her eyes and saw Pansy. She opened her eyes even wider upon seeing that she was sitting on the grass behind her home, surrounded by people she never would have invited to a garden party unless she'd been placed under Imperius or blackmailed. Then her eyes fell on the old man standing beside Shacklebolt and her jaw dropped in surprise.

"Blaise! What on earth? You're dead!"

Arthur slapped his brow. "That's right! I remember seeing that in the _Prophet_ a few years back."

"What's going on? Where's your son?" She looked nervously at Shacklebolt. "I—I was under Imperius. I never wanted to hurt little children, but his son forced—"

"I don't think you were with his son, Mother," Draco said, looking rather relieved about this. "The kids said that after his potion wore off, Blaise suddenly looked like _this_. He was using Polyjuice to _look_ like his son, but I don't think he was ever involved in this."

"I was never with your son? I was with _you_?" Narcissa gasped, glaring at the old man. " _Again_?"

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	52. There is Only Power

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Fifty-Two**

 **There is Only Power**

 **#/#/#**

"I was never with your son? I was with _you_?" Narcissa gasped. " _Again_?"

"Again?" at least a half-dozen voices repeated.

Harry stared with his mouth open while Ginny looked like she was trying not to laugh. Her mouth turned up at the corners and she whispered to Harry, "Look at the expression on Malfoy's—"

"What d'you mean _again_?" Draco demanded, his voice going up.

"I—I couldn't get you out of my head—or my heart—all these years, Narcissa," the old man who was evidently Blaise Zabini, Sr. said in a wheedling voice. Harry wondered whether the Veritaserum Snape had given him had taken effect yet.

"Codswallop! You expect me to believe that?" she sneered. "You _used_ me. You pretended to be your own son to seduce me, knowing that I wouldn't come near you as you are _now_ ," she said, recoiling in disgust at his appearance. "And then you plied me with promises of getting my son out of prison and making him a great Dark Lord."

"My son was squandering his youth!" Zabini growled. It seemed that he'd given up on trying to seem like an innocent old man, or he was unable to continue the charade due to the potion's influence. "Never looked twice at women. He wasn't going to give me any heirs that way. A few years ago, I began making a steady supply of Polyjuice Potion to live as _him_ , to make some _use_ of being a young, vital wizard. And as I knew he hadn't been with a woman…well, I'd heard of a spell that would allow me to take the power of a virginal witch or wizard and add it to my own. Draco told my son about it when they were in school; Lucius had threatened to use it on him. That meant that the most likely place to find the spellbook was in this house, but I knew I'd need a good reason to give you for helping me."

"I take it this is the book in question?" Snape said, hefting the enormous tome he'd carried out of the house. Zabini nodded. Hermione handed Frances to Ginny.

"Do you mind if I take a look?" Hermione asked Snape. "In the course of my work I've come across a spell that's been used by some house-elf masters to suppress their elves' power, in addition to requiring their absolute loyalty and secrecy. No one has managed to actually _take_ the power from their elves, as far as I know, let alone add that power to their own, but perhaps I can learn why _he_ doesn't seem to be a wizard anymore," she said, gesturing with her head toward the old man, who seemed much more alert, as if energised by telling his story. The potion had made him quite chatty. Snape handed her the tome and she levitated it, raising the lit end of her wand to peruse the stiff parchment pages, which made crackling noises as she turned them.

"When I'd become comfortable enough in his skin and had learned enough to convince his old mates that I was him, I killed myself off," Zabini continued. "Had a mock-funeral where I posed as my son, who I was keeping under Imperius. The trouble was—I hadn't worked out yet what incentive I could give Narcissa for helping me to find the spell I wanted. Even being with a handsome young wizard her son's age didn't seem like quite enough to offer to guarantee that she'd accept."

Narcissa Malfoy turned the pinkest Harry had ever seen her and looked mortally embarrassed.

"Then one day I read in the paper that Harry Potter had had a son when he was seventeen. That put me in mind of my own bastard and the use to which I could put him, if only I could get him out of Azkaban, which was certainly something I could offer to his mother that would appeal to her," he said, looking at Narcissa and Draco.

" _What_?" Malfoy said, incensed. "That— _that_ is my father? No. Just— _no_. I am a _Malfoy_!" he shouted at his mother, who snorted.

"Draco, darling, I'm afraid that a Malfoy is the _last_ thing you are. Your father and I—or rather, my husband and I—tried for years to have a child, but he would never admit that the problem was his. He blamed me. I did what I had to do in order to become pregnant. He was beginning to frighten me," she admitted. "Telling me how he admired Henry VIII the most of all the kings of England. Which I was certain meant that he didn't just want a child, he wanted a son. So I sought out men who had already had sons, men who might be able to do it again."

" _Such as_?" Draco demanded, his voice going up even more.

"Well, do you remember some boys who were in school at the same time you were? They were a little older. Warrington, Montague, Pucey…"

"You shagged _all_ of their fathers? What, did you shag Flint's dad, too?"

She snorted again. "Don't be absurd. Not that he didn't offer, but no, I wasn't _that_ desperate. And there was another one..." She looked at Pansy. "You know, of course, that Pansy's brother is about ten years older than she is?"

" _Mr. Parkinson_?" Draco squeaked. "But—but then Pansy could be my—"

"Why do you think I've been trying to keep you apart all these years? Or why I asked you about steps you were taking to prevent a child?" Narcissa rolled her eyes. "Still—chances are that you're a Zabini, not a Parkinson, Warrington, Montague or Pucey. But I was playing it safe by trying to warn you off your possible half-sister. In case I was wrong."

"Wait," Neville said suddenly. "You said you were going after men who'd already had sons. Blaise Zabini was in our year."

"He had an older brother, already grown up when he died. A very messy Splinching, too, in a place that was far too isolated for anyone to save him. Ministry officials arrived too late to do anything. When the body parts were found it made the Muggle newspapers. They thought some mad axe-man was on the loose, until there were no more similar murders. Everyone soon forgot about the unidentified arms and legs, and ears and nose…"

" _I didn't_ ," Zabini said softly, a distinctly menacing tone creeping into his voice. "And I wanted another son. I had a new, young wife who was already pregnant, but there was no guarantee that it would be a boy, so I helped Narcissa. Then my new child was a boy, to whom I gave my own name, so I felt free to ignore Narcissa's bastard and let Lucius think he'd got her pregnant at last." He shook his head. "But my Blaise never showed a bit of ambition. Some Slytherin!"

"Where _is_ he now?" Draco wanted to know. "I mean—we're evidently talking about my brother here. Or my half-brother, who I didn't even know was in my dorm for seven years! Where the hell is he?"

"You were there already. My London house. My son is the one who verified once and for all that it really was the right spell. I had him under Imperius so he couldn't leave his room and he'd do whatever I wanted. I was always rubbish at Latin but he was a bit of a swot in school. What he didn't realise was that I was going to test the spell on him first, since he'd said he hadn't been with a woman. I brought him here in the middle of the night, even though he said that midnight on Easter would be best, and when it didn't work I almost called off everything. Then he confessed that he'd been with a man—more than one, actually, rather than women. That's why he was no longer untouched. He said that the spell should work on the children, especially if we waited for Easter. If I hadn't needed him to continue to make the Polyjuice Potion I'd have killed him then and there!"

"Why, you old homophobic—" Hermione started to say before she was interrupted.

"Oh, yeah!" Goyle said, speaking for the first time. "That's right. I did reckon it was odd that Zabini was with your mum, Draco, when I'd seen him with a couple of different blokes when we was in school. Not doing much, mind you, but maybe with more privacy they—"

" _You couldn't have bothered to tell me this_?" Draco ground out between clenched teeth.

"Don't look at me. Crabbe saw him, too. We didn't think—we thought he'd changed his mind about whether he fancied men or women. Or decided he liked both. Didn't seem like it really mattered, did it?" It seemed to Harry that his tone toward Draco was markedly changed; he wasn't cowed by Draco's hostility but was standing up for himself and Crabbe.

"Didn't matter? _Didn't matter_?" Draco growled at them. Narcissa seemed as cross as he was.

"Idiots! You could have told _me_ , as well," she said. "I _thought_ it was odd that he, well, that he was so _exactly_ like his father in the way he did certain things…"

Draco looked like he wanted to either hit his own mother over the head with a cast-iron pan or let Pansy do it again. Kingsley Shacklebolt decided to cut short the post-mortem. "We'd better get this lot back to the Ministry," Shacklebolt said, gesturing toward Zabini, Narcissa, Draco, Pansy, Crabbe and Goyle. "We already have signed agreements with you two, and it seems that you've held up your ends," he said, nodding to Draco's hulking friends.

"What about them?" Hermione asked, giving Draco and Pansy a hostile glare. "Are they turning Queen's evidence as well?"

"Merlin's evidence, you mean," Neville said, gently correcting her.

Shacklebolt shrugged. "Up to them. If you do decide to turn Merlin's evidence," he said, speaking to Draco and Pansy, "we can draw up a similar agreement. Unless you _want_ to share a cell in Azkaban with this old coot. And your mum," he added to Draco.

Draco and Pansy didn't seem anxious to do this at all, and Narcissa, to Pansy's disappointment, also seemed interested in testifying against Zabini. Shacklebolt had soon conjured a Portkey out of a branch he'd pulled off a topiary. He and Neville were preparing to leave with the prisoners when Shacklebolt turned to Hermione and said, "You'll bring that book to the Ministry when you're through with it?" She nodded wordlessly, her nose buried in the pages again. Neville kissed her on the forehead before taking hold of the Portkey as Shacklebolt counted down, "Three…two…one…"

Suddenly they were gone, in a maelstrom of magical wind and power that made the hair stand on the back of Harry's neck. Ginny bounced Frances in her arms while Harry continued to hold Charlotte. "What I don't understand is how someone trying to take a child's power manages to lose his own power," Harry said as Charlotte squirmed.

Teddy's, Nate's and Julian's voices overlapped each other as they described what had happened in the chamber. "And then I summoned the wands—and they came to me," Teddy said breathlessly, his audience hanging on his every word.

"But—you did not use a wand for the spell, no?" his Aunt Fleur asked, flustered. Percy and Penelope peered over Hermione's hands at the book hovering before her. Suddenly, Percy's finger was stabbing at the page and Hermione and Penelope were grinning.

"That's what happened!" Hermione exclaimed. "He didn't pay attention to the conjugation of the verb!"

"What?" Harry said, striding over to her.

"Well, he said that Latin wasn't his strong suit, or else he'd have seen that it's not saying, 'Give me power,' in the vocative, it's saying, 'I give power.'" They all tried to gather round the book. She turned some of the thick old parchment pages and pointed at a lengthy Latin commentary written so small that the letters looked like ants crawling across the page.

Harry felt as though he'd just woken from a very long sleep. "No, he wouldn't have seen it. Remember? He said that _his son told him it was the right spell_ , and that he'd been a swot in school. Zabini _was_ a swot, and he _would_ have known exactly what the spell did."

Ginny dropped her jaw. "He purposefully told his dad it was the right spell when he knew that performing it on a child would cause his dad to transfer his power to that child. He knew _exactly_ what he was doing!"

"Why didn't Zabini just order his son to tell him the absolute truth, since he had him under Imperius?" Ron asked.

"He must have fought it," Harry whispered, thinking about his own experience with Imperius. "After a while he must have been able to fake it and he made his dad think he was still doing everything he was told."

Arthur whistled through his teeth. "Perhaps we should see about young Zabini getting the Order of Merlin when this is all over."

But Hermione's nose was still buried in the book. "From what I can tell, this is a spell that someone old and dying can use to give their power to someone as a parting gift, you might say. But the recipient has to be 'physically pure', it says, and not _know_ about the gift of power. The one who receives the power cannot be seeking more power or the spell won't work. And it says that there are loads of times when dying grandparents or great-grandparents had _intended_ to use the spell to give away their power but changed their minds at the last minute, in case they weren't _really_ dying, and usually, when they _were_ dying it turned out to be too late, or they couldn't speak, or no one else was around. That sort of thing. So it hasn't been done that often. Although, according to the writing in the margins, it _was_ done in Bavaria, over a hundred years ago." She gasped and lifted her face to the others. "The great-great-grandfather _and_ great-great-grandmother of Grindelwald gave him their power when he was eight years old and they were dying."

"Grindelwald!" Harry said in shock. "But he—but Dumbledore—"

"Yes," said Hermione, nodding grimly. "Exactly."

Ron and Luna held their four children closely, as if they never wanted to let them go. "Giving up power isn't human nature. No wonder the spell has hardly ever been used," Luna said quietly. She met Percy's eyes again with her unblinking gaze. "I do wish I'd said something about the possibility that you weren't really _you_ , which was the other explanation I could think of for your behaviour, other than amnesia. But considering what I knew other people thought of you, I couldn't think of a single reason why anyone would want to pretend to be _you_." She said this unblinkingly, as if completely unworried about possibly offending him.

Ginny nodded. "A motive can usually make everything clearer, that's true." She hugged Ruby and Rory once more, even while holding Frances for Hermione. "I'm just so relieved!"

Pulling back from her, Ruby said, "The truly cool thing was when we discovered the magic carpet. Here, let us show you. All kids on the carpet!" she called, taking Charlotte from Harry's arms while Rory took Frances from Ginny. The others did it immediately, sitting on the absurdly bright patterns surrounded by the browning Malfoy lawn.

"And Julian wished that it was like a cushion—" Ruby started saying.

"Right, like this: _I wish this carpet was like a giant cushion,_ " Julian said. Immediately, the carpet complied, puffing up and raising the children off the ground a few inches.

"I just wish," Nate said, lying back on the cushion, looking tired of telling about their adventures, "that I was already back home in London."

"Me, too," Teddy agreed wearily, leaning sideways against Ruby's shoulder.

Suddenly, the magic carpet rose from the ground, making all of the children scream and cling to each other in shock. Before anyone knew what was happening, it had shot up high in the air over the house and started streaking through the sky.

Harry watched them go, his heart leaping into his throat. He looked about for his broom, realizing that he must have left it in the forest. He shouted, " _Accio broom_!"

A broom came shooting out of the forest at lethal speed and Harry caught it deftly in his left hand, leaping onto the handle and kicking off into the air without another word to the rest of them. Ginny watched him go, streaking through the sky in the wake of the flying carpet. "He'll catch them," she said, her voice shaking. "He'll make sure they're all right." She turned and gave her father a fierce glare, as if he'd contradicted her. "We didn't go through all of this to get them back only to lose them now."

#/#/#

The wind stung Harry's face and whipped his robes around his legs so hard that it was painful. It felt like Beaters were repeatedly hitting his legs with their bats. The carpet was speeding far ahead of him and he had to squint to see it in the darkness. As they moved swiftly away from the Malfoy estate, clouds obscured the half-moon and they weren't yet close enough to the city for there to be light pollution, so the carpet with the children was a blur only marginally darker than the blue-black sky.

He urged the broom forward, still faster, starting to gain on the children. As they drew nearer to London Harry could see them a little better with the help of the numerous lights glowing below. But nearing London also brought him more worries, as he tried to urge his broom on, drawing closer and closer to the children. He worried that they would fly directly into the London Eye, the enormous Ferris wheel on the banks of the Thames; he worried that they would fall off the carpet over St. Paul's and be stranded on the great dome of the cathedral; he worried that the queen would see them flying by her windows at Buckingham Palace and notify the Muggle Prime Minister, who would complain to the Minister for Magic and demand that Harry and Ginny be fired from Hogwarts and Teddy, Nate, Ruby, Rory and Marguerite expelled…

The carpet dipped suddenly and Harry hesitated, not wanting to fly low enough for Muggles on the ground to see him, preferring to remain high enough that they might think he was a plane or a helicopter. He looked down when he was over the spot where they had descended. He wasn't able to see them very clearly, but the children appeared to be on the ground, rolling up the carpet, which was flat again. Glancing around nervously, Harry dove almost straight down, wishing he'd had the time to use a Disillusionment Charm before pursuing the children, hoping the Ministry wouldn't come down on him too hard.

He pulled up suddenly when he was within just a few feet of the ground. When he landed the children had almost finished entering an old building similar to Zabini's London house. It appeared to be chopped up into a number of flats; there were at least a half-dozen buzzers on the doorframe, with crudely-lettered surnames on yellowing paper below each one. Immediately, Ruby and Rory dropped the end of the rolled-up carpet and ran to him. "Dad!" The twins threw their arms around him and Harry closed his eyes as he gathered them to him. They were nearly as tall as Ginny now and he no longer had to bend over to hug them. He felt as if he might have a nervous breakdown any moment. After getting his children back he felt he'd been _this close_ to losing them again, and he didn't think he could take much more uncertainty where his kids were concerned.

"What happened?" he demanded. "And why are you going into this building?"

"We live here with our mum," Nate told him, nodding at Julian. Nate and Teddy had been carrying the other end of the carpet but had had to put it down when the twins dropped the back end. "And we're not really certain what happened. After I said that wished I was home in London and Teddy said, 'Me too,' the next thing we knew we were on our way here. We had no idea the carpet could go so fast! And none of the other wishes we made were able to undo those wishes. We really did try, the whole way here, but nothing worked."

While Nate spoke Teddy examined his shoes. Harry watched him as he listened to Nate, wondering why Teddy looked so guilty, and why he hadn't greeted Harry. _Some_ acknowledgment of his presence would have been nice. "All right, then," Harry said, "go on and take the carpet up to your flat. We're better off talking upstairs, I expect," he added, tucking the broom behind his back and smiling feebly at the perplexed Muggles passing by, gawping at Harry and the twelve children with the rolled-up carpet.

Harry was relieved when they finally reached the flat. Nate suddenly realised that he didn't have his key but it took only a moment for Harry to get them in with a quick _Alohomora_. The children spilled through the door. Nate, Teddy and the twins dropped the carpet in the lounge while Marguerite carried the babies to the couch. Two of Ron's little boys bounced on an armchair and ottoman. Harry was about to tell them to settle down, but one look at Teddy's face changed his mind. There were more important things to talk about.

"Teddy—can I see you in the kitchen? Nate—you're in charge. It's your flat, after all. After everyone's had a chance to get their bearings I'll take you all to the Ministry. No more magic, though. We'll use the Underground."

"Okay. Oi, Cedric and Hal! Stop bouncing!" Nate's brows knit and he strode over to the little boys. Harry couldn't help smiling at how much Nate sounded like the Percy he'd first met when he started Hogwarts. He walked into the tiny kitchen, Teddy following him without a word.

Harry sat at the small table and gestured to the chair on the opposite side. Teddy sat, still not meeting his eyes. "Teddy," he began, but his son interrupted him.

"All right, say it, say it!" Teddy cried, lifting shining eyes to Harry.

Harry hesitated. "Say what?"

"I'm going to be evil now, aren't I? Like Grindelwald!" Harry had never seen his son more thoroughly miserable.

Harry took a deep breath. "Is that what you think? That you're doomed to be evil because you received power you weren't seeking? Because you selflessly threw yourself in the path of a spell meant for someone who had been trying to get you killed not too long ago? Teddy, if there's one thing that I've learned since I found out that I'm a wizard, it's that power isn't the problem. What people do with it— _that's_ the problem. Or doing anything at all with it. Nothing says that you _have_ to—"

"But you saw what happened!" Teddy whispered desperately, his eyes going to the doorway, as if afraid of the others overhearing. "Yeah, it was cool when I managed to summon those wands without having one myself. Not that Zabini was a threat anymore. When I agreed with Nate's wish—I actually meant that I also wished I was home again, at Latere Farm. But the carpet wouldn't listen to any other wishes. And I was afraid to wish anything else, after what 'Me, too' got us."

Harry nodded sympathetically. "I know what it's like to—to have abilities you'd rather not have. The first time I spoke Parseltongue at school… Well, afterward Ron and Hermione looked at me like I had two heads. Or as if I really _was_ the Heir of Slytherin. Loads of other kids in the school thought I was, just because I could speak snake-language and Voldemort was a Parselmouth. I didn't like being associated with him any more than you like being associated with Grindelwald. But did I model myself on Voldemort? Do you have to model yourself on Grindelwald? Of course not." He sighed and looked at his hands on the table. "That was why Dumbledore didn't want the Ministry using the Dementors to guard Azkaban. They represent a great and awesome power, but an evil one. For the Ministry to use that power at all, even for something like keeping prisoners subdued, was evil in itself. Dumbledore was never sorry that we had to stop using them at the prison.

"Witches and wizards need to exercise self-control. We're not supposed to use magic in front of Muggles. Kids aren't supposed to do magic away from school until they're seventeen. You'll have a slightly more challenging bit of self-control to exercise, but I think you can do it."

Teddy looked at his dad, wondering. "So—is that why you don't do magic much when you're at St Clare's? Self-control?"

Harry nodded. "Yes, you've got it. I mean—I know that most witches and wizards use magic a lot in their everyday lives. Cooking and keeping food fresh and Apparating here and there. The Floo network. Summoning charms that mean you don't need to walk up and down stairs constantly, or even cross the room. But somehow… I don't know. After I got back from Beyond the Veil with Ron, using magic that way seemed so—so _trivial_. It cheapened what we could do. I felt, after that, that magic should be reserved for things that were really important. Maybe using magic that way leads people to abusing it in other ways, after all. You never know. A slippery-slope sort of thing. Muggles get by without it. They abuse other sorts of power, but that's another story. Do you understand what I'm saying? Don't think that you _have_ to use power just because you have it. Or that you have to use it a certain way. Zabini made a big mistake: he assumed that he could _take_ power. Another thing I've learned since I was eleven is that you can't. You can only be _given_ power. Zabini never learned that, I reckon."

"No, he definitely never learned that," Teddy whispered, and Harry remembered Nate's saying, in the jumble of words back at the Malfoys', that Zabini had put the Cruciatus Curse on Teddy. His heart ached to think of it, to think of his boy going through that. He was fourteen; Harry had been nearly fourteen when Voldemort had tortured him in the graveyard at Little Hangleton.

"Quirrell said something to me when he was trying to get the Philosopher's Stone from the Mirror of Erised, a power that I received because _I didn't want to use it_. He said, 'There is no good or evil; only power, and those too weak to seek it.' He was basically right about the good or evil part. There _is_ only power. But he was wrong about being weak if you don't seek it. You're weak if all you _do_ is seek power. You have to have all the strength in the world to _refrain_ from seeking more power, or abusing the power that you have. That's what he didn't _get_ , what Voldemort didn't get, what Grindelwald didn't get. That's what Dumbledore has always known, and what he taught me. That's why we teach _defence_ against the Dark Arts, why using magic against someone else is considered a last resort, something you only do _in defence_. And I think that's what you already know, Teddy, or you wouldn't be so worried."

Teddy seemed to feel a bit better. "Thanks, Dad," he said simply, just as Nate appeared in the doorway.

"Erm, Uncle Harry?" Nate said tentatively. "We've got a couple of problems. First, I just remembered—it's still Easter. No Underground today."

"What? Not at all?" Harry said, perplexed.

"You've never lived in London, have you, Uncle Harry?" Nate said, shaking his head.

"Well, not in a Muggle house, at any rate. Brilliant," Harry said, running his hand through his hair, making it stand on end. "I have plenty of Muggle money, but no wizarding currency, so we can't take the Knight Bus. What's the other problem?"

"Most everyone is passed out. Asleep, that is. Long day." He stood aside so that Harry and Teddy could see into the lounge, where the other ten children were peacefully snoring, some on the couch and chairs, some on the magic carpet.

Harry sighed again. "All right. I'll call Ginny and she can tell the others that we're going to spend the night here. We'll go to the Ministry first thing in the morning." Suddenly a yawn overcame him. "I could do with a lie-down myself."

"Why don't you and Teddy take my mum's bedroom? I've got my own bed, and I'll move Julian to his. Could you give me a hand with him, Teddy?" Nate also yawned. "I only just realised how knackered I am."

Harry took out his mobile while the boys moved the sleeping Julian from an armchair to his own bed. When Ginny finally answered, she sounded frantic, but he soon had her calmed as he explained what had happened.

"Oh, dear. He was afraid that having Zabini's power would make him _evil_?"

"I was afraid of the same thing. For myself, that is, when I found out I was a Parselmouth."

"I see. Well, I'll hail the Knight Bus and we'll be there in a blink. I'll ask Penny where it is."

"Actually, Ginny," Harry said quickly, "don't do that." He walked into the lounge, where the children were sleeping peacefully. "Let's let them sleep where they are. A reunion now with their parents will be chaos again. They'll be wound up for the rest of the night. Everyone's safe, so let's all get some rest and we'll take the Underground to the Ministry in the morning. Besides, I think Penelope and Percy may want to have a real reunion where there aren't already thirteen people sleeping."

"All right. I'll convince the others. No point in disturbing the kids."

"Everything will be fine. I'll make certain that the babies have clean nappies and everyone is tucked up warmly. Don't worry."

Ginny laughed. "So, now that we've had four kids to take care of, and sometimes five and six when Nate and Donna are visiting, you've decided that a dozen will be a breeze?"

"Well, Trelawney did say once that I would have twelve kids and be the Minister for Magic," he responded, trying not to laugh or speak too loudly. "One down, one to go."

"You silly." She paused for a moment. "I love you. Sleep well. See you in the morning."

"I will. Love you," he responded before he rang off. He put the mobile back in his pocket and regarded the sleeping children once more. They _were_ his responsibility, at least tonight, so perhaps Trelawney _had_ been right about that, even though she was only trying to annoy Dolores Umbridge.

"Good old Sybill," he said softly, his heart clenching as he looked at one innocent, childish face after the other. "You could only get it right when you weren't even trying," he chuckled, leaning over to kiss Ruby and Rory on the tops of their heads.

#/#/#

When Harry awoke it was still before dawn. He was startled to see that Teddy was awake, standing at the window in Penelope's bedroom, looking out at the quiet London street on which the Clearwaters lived.

"You should get more sleep, Teddy."

"Like you?" he said, grinning. Harry felt a warmth in his chest at seeing his son smile at him so naturally, looking happy. Harry smiled back at him.

"Yeah, like me. Come on."

"Can't. I'm too keyed up. Too—restless," Teddy said, pacing before the window, swinging his arms. "Is this what it was like for you? What it was like to—well, you know, to—"

"To be the hero?"

Teddy turned red. "Well, I reckon that's the best way to put it."

Harry looked closely at Teddy and took a deep breath. "Sit down. What I'm about to tell you isn't in any of the history books. Ron knows, because he was there, and Hermione knows, of course, plus Ginny, Luna, and Neville. And Dumbledore. But none of us ever told anyone else. Not a single historian, Harry Potter biographer, you name it. Oh, and not Ginny's parents. They wouldn't understand."

"Understand what?" Teddy asked, frowning.

"How I really defeated Voldemort."

Teddy stared at him. "You're joking. Everything I've read says that you just took Voldemort through the Veil and came back with Ron. And that was that. You're really going to tell me what happened?"

"It was a bit more complicated. You see, most of the accounts make it sound like I intended to take Voldemort through the Veil, that that was my plan all along."

"It wasn't?"

"No. Never occurred to me, actually. I had a different idea. See, at the end of my fifth year I found out about the prophecy that made Voldemort want to kill me when I was a baby. _The one with the power to defeat the Dark Lord approaches…born as the seventh month dies…And either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives…_

"Naturally, I was a bit depressed by the idea that I had to kill or be killed. And I wasn't terribly impressed by Dumbledore telling me that the power I had that Voldemort didn't was _love_. However, by my seventh year, I was thinking about my power a little differently. When I was in the Department of Mysteries in my fifth year, I had this knife that Sirius gave me that could open anything. Almost. It couldn't open this one door in the Department of Mysteries. Instead it melted the knife when I tried."

"What was on the other side of the door?" Teddy asked.

"I didn't know, but my best guess was something to do with the mystery of Love. We'd seen rooms in the Department of Mysteries for Time and Space, and there was the Hall of Prophecies and the Death Chamber, with the Veil… I thought, if I could find a way through that door and I could work out how to use it, use Love to get rid of Voldemort…

"So, Ron and I went to see Dumbledore. Ron knew the password because he was a prefect. Neville was already in Dumbledore's office, talking to him about going into the Auror training program after leaving school. I pretended that that was why I'd come to see him, too, and Ron as well, but after Neville left, we told him that we wanted permission from the Ministry to go through that door, so I could find out how to use the power of Love to defeat Voldemort."

"And was Love the key to defeating him?" Teddy wanted to know. "Is that what isn't in the books?"

"Yes," Harry told him, hesitating. "And no."

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	53. At the Hand of the Other

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Fifty-Three**

 **At the Hand of the Other**

 **#/#/#**

Teddy sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed while Harry leaned against the headboard, closing his eyes and telling his son about the day he'd returned to the Department of Mysteries and attempted to enter the forbidden chamber, to fathom the Mystery of Love…

 _Dumbledore put his fingers together in a steeple and looked over the gnarled hands at Harry and Ron, sitting before his desk. "So—what really brings you here on this fine spring evening?"_

 _Harry swallowed and said, "I've thought a lot about the Prophecy and the power that I have that Voldemort doesn't. About Love. And I've also been thinking about that door in the Department of Mysteries that I couldn't get through two years ago. I think that could be the key to defeating Voldemort."_

 _Dumbledore nodded. "The key to defeating Voldemort. Quite possibly. Yes, quite possibly. It is difficult to say. Few wizards have been able to penetrate that door. None of the Unspeakables currently working for the Ministry have managed to do so. As you said, when you were there two years ago, you couldn't do it."_

 _Harry shook his head. "I never understood that. The knife that Sirius gave me opened all the other doors."_

 _Dumbledore gave him a wry, twisted smile. "Do you think that a knife, a weapon, can be used to force Love? Of course you couldn't get through that door with a knife. You have to present yourself to that door for judgment. If it had deemed you ready to enter, you would have done. But you were not, so you did not."_

" _So—I wasn't worthy to enter? I thought I had this power that Voldemort doesn't."_

" _You do and you did then as well. I said that you were not ready to enter, not that you were not deemed worthy. You did not understand love in the way that I think you do now."_

" _I didn't—but—but I want to go through the door so I'll understand it better! Are you saying I have to understand it in order to be able to get through the door in the first place? What's the point of that?" Harry fumed, standing and pacing, feeling very close, once again, to throwing Dumbledore's silver instruments all over the office._

" _Temper, temper, Potter," Phineas Nigellus said from his frame. Harry scowled._

" _It may not seem logical, Harry, but love often defies logic, you know. Who knew that love would prompt Voldemort to offer to spare your mother? And that your mother's love for you would prompt her to offer up her life, though she could have lived? Who knew that that would give you protection against the Killing Curse?"_

" _Yeah, but now he has that protection too. He took my blood and then touched me without feeling pain."_

 _Dumbledore smiled and nodded. "And you have some of him in you, some of his power. What has always interested me is the particular power of his that you have shown. It is a uniting power, not a divisive one, which is Voldemort's usual preference and why the Dementors are his natural allies."_

" _A uniting power? You make it sound like a good thing. Do you know how hated and feared I was in second year as soon as everyone found out I was a Parselmouth?"_

" _Being able to speak to the Other is a uniting power. Love is a uniting power. You have received a bit of that type of power from him and he from you. You are linked."_

" _But how does that make Love the power I have that he doesn't? That's what I still don't understand, and why I need to get through that door."_

" _He has the protection of your mother's love but he does not comprehend it. That is your advantage: that the thing that protects him is the very thing he abhors most."_

" _So, you think it's worth a try? Going back to the Department of Mysteries, going through that door?"_

" _Too bad we don't just have a bloody key for it," Ron grumbled._

" _Ah, but we do. If the time is ripe, then Harry is the key," Dumbledore said, nodding in Harry's direction._

" _But even if I present myself to the door and it opens, how will I know how to use Love to defeat Voldemort?"_

" _I cannot tell you that, Harry. The answer very likely lies on the other side of the door."_

 _Harry suddenly realised that Dumbledore had said something odd. "What did you mean when you said that love prompted Voldemort to offer to spare my mother? I thought he couldn't love?"_

"I think I know what he meant," Teddy said slowly. "I—I heard Severus talking to my mum about it. They didn't know I could hear them. We were at the cottage on the Isle of Wight. It was late and I got up for some water. He told my mum that he had never expected to be competing with a Potter again for the woman he loved."

" _What_?" Harry gasped, his jaw dropping. "He—he was competing with my dad for _my mum_? But—but he called her a Mudblood!"

Teddy shrugged. "He said that when they were in school he and your mum were friends. He wanted to be more but it was hard enough to just do that without other people finding out. They pretended to hate each other when they were in public. He had almost got up the nerve to tell her how he felt when your dad saved his life. After that your mum's attitude toward your dad changed, and soon after they were going out and Severus knew he'd missed his chance. That's why he hated the fact that your dad saved his life. It made your mum look at your dad differently."

"Less like a berk, you mean," Harry said, grimacing.

"I reckon. Severus said that he didn't much care what he did after that, which was why he went along when a lot of other Slytherins were signing on as Death Eaters. But he also said that he'd never felt worse in his life than when he found out that Voldemort was targeting your family. That's why he became a spy. And then the Secret Keeper—"

" _Wormtail_ ," Harry hissed.

"—told _him_ where to find you, so all he could do was ask Voldemort to spare your mother. He knew he couldn't actually stop him from trying to kill _you_ , so he decided to do what he could to save your mum."

Harry shook his head in confusion. "But I always thought… Peter Pettigrew hero-worshipped my father. I reckoned that when my parents got together he started doing that with my mother, too, and maybe fell in love with her. I thought he must have been the one to ask Voldemort to spare her, because he had some sick idea that he could 'have' her after my dad and I were dead."

Teddy gasped. "Did Dumbledore believe that? Is that what he told you?"

"No, I just assumed. Dumbledore never gave me an answer to my question. He said that it wasn't his place to tell me who'd asked for my mother's life to be spared. And then all hell broke loose."

"What do you mean?"

"A Patronus came through the window, a distress call from Tonks. They were ambushed, most of the Order. Death Eaters. And Voldemort too. Dumbledore needed to go. He used Fawkes to transport himself out of the Head's office. Ron and I didn't know what to do. If most of the members of the Order were killed…"

"But I know this part. This _is_ in the books. Dumbledore sent Fawkes back to you with a message."

Harry nodded. "Right. 'We need a distraction.' I knew just what he meant. He'd been teaching me Legilimancy. I'd been successful a number of times, but I'd never tried to _send_ a message directly to Voldemort, or tried to fool him the way he'd fooled me about Sirius being tortured at the Ministry. I had to try. I realised that the easiest thing to do wouldn't be to try to make up something about what I was doing but to actually _do_ it, to really lure him away from the Order, leave his Death Eaters without a leader."

"You went to the Department of Mysteries to open the door," Teddy said in awe. "And you used your link to him and Legilimancy to tell him you were doing it."

"Yes, I used my connection to Voldemort to tell him when I was at the Ministry, to tell him that he could come and get me."

Teddy gave Harry a small smile. "But Uncle Ron and Uncle Neville wouldn't let you go alone."

Harry laughed, remembering. "No, no they wouldn't. I wanted to hex Ron for arguing with me, but then Neville came back into the office—he'd been listening on the other side of the door after he'd left—and he said he wanted to come too. I needed both of them, he said.

"I gave in. I didn't have time to row with them both. As soon as I gave in, Fawkes flew to the glass case in Dumbledore's office where Gryffindor's sword was kept, the one I'd used to kill the basilisk. I didn't see how using a sword would be defeating Voldemort with Love, but having another weapon didn't seem like a bad idea, so I took it. Then we all grabbed Fawkes and he took us to the Department of Mysteries in a flash. When we arrived, I tried to create a connection to Voldemort, to tell him where I was. Once Voldemort was gone, Dumbledore could save the others, he could handle the Death Eaters. And maybe if I could get through that _one door_ I could force Voldemort to go through with me." Harry gave a soft laugh. "I thought—maybe if he was surrounded by love, in that room or wherever it led, his head would explode or something. Not much of a plan."

"But you didn't get through the door..."

"Not at first. We ended up being chased all through the Department of Mysteries again by Voldemort and some Death Eaters he'd brought with him, including Lucius Malfoy. And during the chase Voldemort tried to put the spell on me that Zabini put on you."

"But Neville blocked it."

"Right," Harry said, not wanting to elaborate on how he'd accomplished this. What had gone on between one of his best friends and her husband while they were still in school wasn't the business of his not-quite fifteen-year-old son.

"But if he hadn't—it would have been the same, it turns out. After all, I was a year old, right? You—you wouldn't have received his power…"

Harry swallowed and didn't disagree, though it wasn't true that he had fathered a child at sixteen. "You know the rest of what's in the books, of course. Going through the Veil with Ron and Voldemort."

"But not what happened there."

"No…"

 _Harry looked around. He, Ron and Voldemort were no longer entwined after going through the Veil. They stood, quite separately, on a flat, grassy plane under a grey sky. The grass appeared to be grey as well. Harry looked at his hands. His wand was gone but he still held Gryffindor's sword. He looked at Ron, standing about ten feet away, also without his wand, his arms swinging uselessly by his sides, a strangely blank expression on his usually-animated face. Voldemort was about ten feet to his left. The sword that his wand had become was gone. He too seemed oddly blank and unanimated. It appeared to Harry that he'd become a large Voldemort-like puppet, but the puppeteer was on a tea-break._

 _Then, even though he didn't think he had blinked, it was as though he had. Suddenly, silently, a figure appeared before each of them. Harry looked at Ron, who faced an older wizard with hair that might have been red if everything about the wizard, from his skin to his clothes, weren't as monotonously grey as the sky and landscape. His face seemed to be made from bits and pieces of Arthur Weasley's face, stretched or compressed here and there._

" _Uncle Bilius," Ron said stonily. It wasn't a question. His voice was flat, atonal. For the first time Harry noticed that while Ron wasn't grey, the light made all of his usual colours look muted, as though he was covered by a layer of fine grey dust. His hair was greyish-orange, his skin greyish-pink, his jeans greyish-blue, his shirt greyish-green. Harry looked at his own hands, his legs in their jeans, his shirt. He appeared to have a layer of granite dust all over as well, though when he tried brushing his hands together there was no change. When he looked at Voldemort he saw that he was the same. A woman stood before Voldemort; she was small and bore a passing resemblance to Moaning Myrtle but looked even more morose._

" _His mother," Harry whispered. Finally, Harry turned to the figure before him, the figure he'd discerned out of the corner of his eye when he'd looked at Ron. He'd thought he knew who he would see but it wasn't his father after all._

" _Sirius," he breathed, wishing he could run toward him, throw his arms around him. He had a feeling that he could if he were only able to get his feet to move, but his greyish trainers remained rooted to the ground._

" _Hello, Harry," Sirius said as though he were speaking from the bottom of a deep well. Voldemort's mother and Ron's uncle were also speaking to them. The air was filled with the echo of their voices, a soft shush-shushing that swirled around Harry's head, making him feel as if it were swathed in cotton batting. He couldn't make out what the woman and Ron's uncle were saying because of the overlapping, shushing echoes. Harry turned to Sirius._

" _Are you—are you really dead? When you fell through the Veil I wasn't certain."_

 _Sirius nodded. "I was already dead. I went down fighting. I'm not sorry. You came to save me. If I hadn't tried to return the favour…" Sirius's voice shushed around them._

" _I understand," Harry said, his own voice sounding very distant to him. "Are you here because—why are you here?"_

" _I am your guide. Everyone gets one when they first arrive. To help you to adjust. Mine was James."_

" _But I'm—" Harry paused, unsure suddenly. Were they dead, the three of them? What did it mean that they'd gone through the Veil without dying first? Was it fatal to simply go through the Veil at all?_

" _I'm still alive, aren't I?" he asked._

 _Sirius inclined his head. "Your body is not dead. I am not sure why. Maybe—" He glanced at the sword in Harry's hand. This alone, amongst the few things visible in the grey world beyond the Veil, still had the full glory of its colours. The rubies on the sword glittered a deep blood-red, blindingly bright amidst the grey._

" _The sword?" Harry asked, lifting it and running his hand over the rubies and etchings on the flat of the blade._

" _You still have life in you—all three of you. You could go back, if—"_

" _If?"_

" _If you do it quickly. Since I have been here, I have heard of others who came through the Veil before their bodies died. They came with some life still in them but after they had been here long enough, the life seeped out of them little by little, until they were as grey as the rest of us."_

" _Why didn't they leave?"_

" _They could not. Most did not come through with a talisman, as you did. Without a talisman you cannot go back."_

 _Harry held up the sword again, examining it. "Talisman?"_

" _A talisman helps you to retain your life-force longer and allows you to pass safely from one world to the next. I only know that that sword qualifies because you still have it. If it were not a talisman you would not have it now. Wands do not do it, evidently. They do not work here—magic does not work here at all—so when a witch or wizard comes through, the wand disappears. There is no magic in this place. At least not as we knew it in life."_

" _What about Ron?" he asked, more disturbed than he could say by seeing Ron's grey cast, the listless way he stood before his uncle, speaking to the older man in a monotone in which Harry could not discern individual words._

" _He came in with more of his life-force than most because he was touching either you or the sword. Even most people who are still living are far more grey than you three after first coming through the Veil. If Ron is also touching you or the talisman he can pass back through the Veil. Him too," he added, gesturing toward Voldemort._

" _Why would I want to—" Harry started to say, turning to look at Voldemort and his mother. He stopped short as he finally heard what they were saying._

" _Why did you leave me, Mummy?" Voldemort said in a strangely plaintive hiss, on his knees before the small, grey woman. She lifted her hand and touched the pale, sunken face as though he were a rosy-cheeked little boy._

" _My heart was broken, Tom," she hissed back at him, and Harry realised that they were speaking Parseltongue. He looked at Sirius, who regarded the mother and son impassively. He half-expected Sirius to ask what they were saying, but he wondered whether Sirius could understand them, being dead. Or maybe he simply couldn't be curious any longer now that he was dead._

" _I left you with good people, Tom," his mother told him._

" _A broken heart!" Voldemort hissed scornfully. "That's what love does," he sneered, standing and glaring at his mother, his voice like a thousand vipers in Harry's head. "It means growing up without a mother…"_

 _Suddenly Harry remembered, very vividly, being six years old and looking up at his Aunt Petunia in tears, asking, "Why do you hate me?"_

 _She had stared at him, perplexed. He remembered the confusion in her voice. "I don't hate you." He believed her, but he saw something else in her face: fear._

 _He asked a new question. "Why are you afraid of me?"_

 _His Aunt Petunia had looked surprised for a moment before her face became a mask of scorn again. "Don't be stupid! Why should anyone be afraid of you? Make yourself useful!" she snapped, handing him a broom. "Sweep the garden path!"_

 _But when his uncle came home from work and found him pushing leaves and grass clippings into a neat pile in the centre of the path, he went livid, his moustache quivering in rage as he grabbed Harry by the collar of the enormous old shirt of Dudley's that he was wearing. He took the broom from him, painfully ripping it from his grasp, storming down the path to the house and kicking at the front door, leaving a footprint on the paint that Harry knew he'd have to clean later. His wife opened the door at his 'knock' and he dragged Harry into the front hall, thrusting the broom into her hands as he entered._

" _You gave him a broom. A broom! What were you thinking?" he bellowed, dropping Harry onto the bottom steps of the staircase, where he sprawled ungracefully._

 _His aunt's face was pale and terrified. "Oh, Vernon," she said in horror. "I—I didn't think…"_

" _Get to your cupboard, boy!" Vernon growled at him. Harry scuttled down the hall, his aunt's terrified face the last thing he saw before slamming the door._

" _You've got to be careful, Petunia!" he heard his uncle shout as he stormed past Harry's cupboard and into the kitchen, making the floorboards shake under Harry's feet._

 _What was supposed to be the problem with his having a broom? Harry wondered. He tried to believe, for a moment, that Aunt Petunia was really afraid of Uncle Vernon, but he remembered that she'd had that look of fear earlier, before his uncle had come home. Why was she afraid of a little boy? A little boy with a broom?_

 _Later, well after the rest of them had eaten what had sounded to Harry like an excellent meal (a joint of some sort of meat, jacket potatoes, boiled carrots, apple tart for pudding), his aunt had opened the door to his cupboard and handed him a mug of weak tea with milk and a plate with cold toast, a token smear of butter on it._

" _Here's your tea," she'd said tersely. "Mind you don't get crumbs in your bed," she added, compulsively smoothing the blanket next to him._

 _There was something about her expression that seemed different to him. He said to her, "I'm sorry, Aunt Petunia. I'm sorry Uncle Vernon shouted at you."_

 _He wasn't sorry that he'd been using a broom, as he couldn't work out why that should be a problem, but he could be sorry for this and be perfectly sincere about it. His aunt was clearly startled by his apology. He'd never offered one before, either for the things he'd actually done or things he was accused of doing but had no idea how they'd happened. She didn't acknowledge what he'd said but gave him a strange look that almost seemed like pity._

" _Bring your mug and plate to the kitchen afterward," she said quickly, without the familiar edge in her voice to which he was accustomed. Her eyes seemed very bright when she turned away. She didn't close his cupboard door before returning to the kitchen, so he didn't have to eat in the dark. When he later brought his dishes to the kitchen she was standing at the sink, still doing the washing-up. She took the mug and plate from him and put them in the soapy water, saying, "I'll wash them. You never get anything clean enough when you do it." He looked up at her, surprised. She usually made him do all of the washing-up. It was almost as if she was afraid of admitting that she was doing something nice for him._

 _The need to have her treat him as she usually treated Dudley was almost a physical ache. He'd seen her, many times, pick up and hold Dudley or pull him onto her lap, hugging and kissing him, crying with him, comforting him. He swallowed, feeling like a heavy stone was sitting in his stomach as he imagined what it would be like for her to put her arms around him, to kiss him on top of the head, to tuck him into a real bed in a real bedroom._

" _A mother," he whispered as he continued to watch Voldemort with his own mother. "A mother's love," he added, feeling as if he was very close to something, a realisation, an epiphany…_

" _You have to be given love to understand it," Harry said quietly. "My mother gave me her love, her life, her protection, and so did my aunt, in her way. She could have refused to take me in, to let me be protected by her blood, by my mother's blood. That was enough for me to be safe."_

 _Voldemort stood. "What are you saying?"_

 _He wasn't sure he could put his thoughts into words adequately. Voldemort was still staring at him. "What are you saying?" he asked again. Only now he appeared to Harry as a little boy. A six-year-old boy with messy black hair, vivid green eyes, round NHS glasses that had been mended with Sellotape across the bridge and—_

 _And a lighting-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead._

" _You're only alive if you can die," Harry said to the boy who looked just as he'd been remembering himself, as a six-year-old. "You can only love if you've risk being loved—or risk not being loved."_

 _Now the little boy looked different; his hair was curly and neatly brushed. His eyes were dark and calculating. He no longer bore a lightning-bolt scar on his brow. Unlike Harry, this little boy was handsome and tall for his age. Harry could see that he would later become the Tom Riddle he'd met in the diary, and in the Chamber._

" _I could have left," the boy said suddenly. "I went to live with them for a while. A family in London. They wanted to adopt me." His face grew stony. He looked into the grey distance as he continued to speak. "They said that they wanted me to be a part of their family, to be their son. They called me a fine boy, a handsome boy, a clever boy. But I knew that when they learned about some of the things I could do they would change their minds, send me back."_

 _Harry nodded. "When you agree to risk being loved, you agree to risk being rejected. You have to take the risk first, though. You have to take a chance."_

 _The boy's face grew even stonier. "I won't. You can't make me."_

 _Harry nodded. "I know. You have to want to. Your father—when he realised that your mother was a witch and abandoned her, she could have used magic to hold onto him. But she didn't."_

" _That's not love," his mother whispered in a slow hiss._

" _You can't take love. You can give it. And you can receive it. It's the epitome of free will," Harry said softly, hissing back at her. "If you try to take it—it's not real love. It's not the same."_

" _But look what it did to her!" the boy cried, pointing at his mother._

" _That's the risk you take when you love," she said in that shushing, hissing voice._

" _The risk you take when you live," Harry echoed her. "If you truly live, with your whole heart, it means that you risk dying."_

 _The boy backed away from him. "No, no…"_

 _Harry stepped toward him, crouched and put his hands on the boy's shoulders. "I know it's scary. Living is scary. Dying is scary. Loving is scary. Not being loved is scary. The first time I kissed Ginny—I didn't know that she still felt the same way about me. But I had to take the chance."_

 _The boy shook him off and stepped back. "No! No no NO!"_

 _Suddenly the boy was gone and Harry was staring at the image of the Voldemort who had gone through the Veil with him. The red eyes were strangely empty and the persistent greyness around them had not dimmed their brightness, like the rubies on the sword in Harry's hand._

" _No no no no!" he continued to say, as petulantly as the little boy._

 _Ron stepped to Harry's side. "But—what about the prophecy? What about 'either must die at the hand of the other'?"_

 _Harry grinned at him. "We did. 'At the hand...' That doesn't have to mean that one of us uses our hands to kill the other. We went through the Veil together. That part of the prophecy was fulfilled." He laughed. "Even that stupid Christmas day prophecy of Trelawney's was fulfilled."_

 _Ron frowned. "What?"_

" _Don't you remember? When the two of us got up from the table at the same time and she said that we would die first, of all the people who'd been at the table? Well, it wasn't a mad axe-man in the Hogwarts entrance hall. We went through the Veil at the same time. So, in her way, she was right. Trelawney. Of all the people there—"_

" _Hermione was right too, though," Ron said, holding out his hand to his uncle. "Uncle Bilius told me. He didn't see the Grim because he was fated to die soon. He died because he scared himself to death. He'd convinced himself that he needed to be afraid of large black dogs. So when he saw one—he died of fright. Like Hermione said."_

" _Self-fulfilling prophecy," Harry said, nodding._

 _Ron let out a sigh of relief. "We can look at it this way: something we no longer have to worry about, right? We've been through the Veil and it's not too bad," he said, shrugging._

 _Harry grinned at him. "So—are you interested in going back? Sirius says that we can because the sword is a talisman."_

 _Ron looked around him and at his uncle. "I reckon it's not the right time for us to be here. I don't think I'll ever be afraid of this again, though."_

 _Harry grinned at him. "Just don't become a daredevil because you're not afraid of dying."_

 _Ron laughed. "You should talk."_

 _Harry turned to Voldemort, who somehow looked smaller, diminished. "What about you? Are you still afraid of dying? Now do you understand why Dumbledore says there are things worse than death?"_

 _Voldemort gave him a sour look. "I always knew that I would triumph over death," he hissed. Ron looked confused and Harry realised that Voldemort was speaking in Parseltongue again. "I came through the Veil alive and I shall leave here alive."_

" _If I take you with me," Harry said tonelessly. "If—you accept my mercy."_

 _Voldemort recoiled in disgust. "Accept your—I do what I will because I will it, no one else!"_

 _Harry looked sadly at him. "How you see it is up to you. I'll still be offering you mercy. I could just leave you here. You don't have to thank me. It doesn't feel right to me for it to end this way. We'll go back, have a fair fight. Just you and me. We both know now what to expect if one of us comes back here." He turned to smile at Sirius. "And I'll get to see Sirius again. And my mum and dad. I will have gone down fighting, like my dad. Like my mum. Like you," he said to his godfather, who gave him a small, grey smile. Harry looked back at Voldemort. "I'm ready if you are."_

 _Voldemort looked at Harry with venom in his gaze but Harry felt nothing but pity for him. That ghastly visage could no longer make him afraid. "We all get to leave," he snarled. "And then we fight—man to man."_

 _Harry nodded. "Man to man," he said in English, watching Ron out of the corner of his eye, wondering what he would think._

" _What's going on?" Ron asked._

" _All three of us will use the sword to go back," Harry said slowly. Ron's eyes widened in shock._

" _All three! But—but it's him, Harry! What's to say he won't just kill us as soon as we go back through the Veil?"_

" _Nothing," Harry said, looking his best friend in the eye. "I thought you weren't afraid of death anymore?"_

" _I'm not. It's just—the principle of it, you know? What's he done to deserve leaving here? I've been your best friend for seven years." He wagged his finger at Harry, reminding him strongly of Molly Weasley. "I could have hexed you over Ginny, too, but I didn't."_

" _That's true, Ron. You're the best friend anyone could ever have." He turned and looked sadly at Voldemort again. "What's he done to deserve mercy? Absolutely nothing. But he's getting it anyway."_

 _Sirius looked expectantly at Harry. "Are you read to go back?"_

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	54. The Mercy of Harry Potter

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 **Chapter Fifty-Four**

 **The Mercy of Harry Potter**

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" _Are you read to go back?"_

 _Harry nodded, his eyes growing moist. "I'm so glad to see you again, Sirius."_

 _Sirius smiled at him like the handsome best man at his parents' wedding, in Harry's photo album. "And I am glad to see you go again, Harry. At least for now. Have you chosen?"_

" _Chosen?"_

" _Where you want to go. The talisman not only allows you to leave here, but to go anywhere you like once you pass through the Veil again."_

" _Anywhere?" Harry repeated, a slow smile creeping across his face. "Anywhere at all? In the entire world?"_

" _Yes, but not off it, I'm afraid," Sirius said with a smirk. "I cannot provide you with a spacesuit and a ship to get back to earth."_

 _Harry laughed. "That hadn't even occurred to me. I'll stick to this planet. I know just the place."_

" _What about our wands?" Ron asked warily, eyeing Voldemort with extreme distrust._

" _I suspect that your wands will be restored to you as soon as you pass through the Veil again."_

" _Where are you going to take us, to that old fool, Dumbledore? Or do you plan to try to take me to Azkaban?" Voldemort sneered._

" _Definitely not Azkaban," Harry said, shuddering at the thought, even though he knew that the Dementors no longer guarded the island prison. "I said I would fight you man to man and I meant it. I don't need you to start opening up the cells, releasing your followers to fight on your side."_

 _Voldemort nodded. He actually seemed impressed. "Very good, Potter. You thought that through. But you still haven't answered me about Dumbledore."_

" _I don't know where Dumbledore is. All I know is that he's helping the Order of the Phoenix fight your Death Eaters. Somewhere. I wasn't going to try to take you to Dumbledore and have him fight you for me. I told you—man to man. I know just where we're going. But you have to promise me one thing."_

" _I promise nothing!" Voldemort hissed at him._

" _You shall promise me this!" Harry barked, hefting the sword in his hand, feeling how much a part of him it was, like an extension of his arm. The two of them glared at each other for a long moment but Voldemort looked away first. "You shall not," Harry said in the same commanding voice, "hurt Ron in any way. No matter what happens between us, you let him go. After all, if you kill Harry Potter, won't you want to have a witness who can tell the world?"_

" _Harry, no!" Ron said, shaking. "Don't trust him."_

 _Voldemort sneered again but answered Harry. "Very well, Potter," he said in the slimiest voice Harry had ever heard him use. Even though he was speaking English his voice slithered as though he were still speaking Parseltongue. "I promise. Your friend shall go free, unaltered and unharmed, to tell the world of your demise."_

 _Ron clenched and unclenched his fists. Harry was certain that if he had a wand he'd be throwing hexes. Harry put his head close to Ron's and whispered, "A promise from you too, Ron. If you see me fall, don't even wait for me to hit the ground. Apparate away as quickly as you can. Don't try to avenge me. I know you're not afraid to die now, but others will need you. Hermione. And Luna and Neville. And—and Ginny," he added with a choke in his voice. "Ginny most of all, Ron. She'll need you so much. You don't want to do that to her, both of us being killed, do you?"_

 _Even in the dim grey light Harry could see that Ron's eyes were moist. "No," he agreed reluctantly. "Wouldn't want to do that," he said, his voice thick from unshed tears._

" _And how would Hermione feel if both of her best friends—"_

" _Yes, Harry, I get it," Ron said, impatient. Then, biting his lip, he said, "Listen, Harry, about Hermione… I have a confession. You know when we found Hagrid? And we were in his hut afterward?"_

" _Stop, Ron," Harry ordered him sternly. "This isn't the time for confessions. You can tell me later."_

" _But—but what if you don't—"_

" _You can tell. Me. Later." Harry looked him in the eye and smiled, loving his best friend more than he thought possible._

" _Right. Later," Ron said, finally agreeing._

" _You'll do it, then? What I asked?"_

" _Yes. Promise. But—" he lowered his voice to a whisper again. "I thought you trusted him?"_

" _When did I say that?" Harry whispered back._

' _You asked him to promise not to hurt me."_

" _Right. But I never said I trusted him." Harry thought for a moment, then said, "Actually, that's not true. I trust him to do exactly what I expect him to do, no more, no less."_

" _Right," Ron said again, nodding. "That's what I was afraid of," he added with a sigh of resignation._

 _Harry turned to Sirius. "So—what do we do?"_

" _You two put your hands on the sword's blade. Harry holds the hilt. He has to think very hard about the place where he wants to go. Then you all walk through the Veil."_

 _Harry turned around. Sitting in the grey landscape, as if it was the only thing left of a ruined castle, stood the stone arch, and hanging in the archway, moving lightly in a breeze Harry couldn't feel, was the Veil. He turned again to Sirius._

" _Thanks, Sirius," he said simply._

" _You are quite welcome, Harry. And if you can manage it, please do not show up here again soon." He grinned at him._

" _I'll do my best," he said, meaning it._

" _That goes for you too, Ron," Sirius added._

 _Ron grimaced and sent a sideways look at Voldemort. "I'll see what I can do," he said noncommittally._

 _Sirius didn't say anything to the older man but he didn't try to talk Harry out of what he was planning to do. Harry looked over his shoulder to see the three of them—Sirius, Uncle Bilius and Tom Riddle's mother—each raising a silent hand in farewell. Then all three turned simultaneously and before they had their backs turned they had all faded back into the greyness around them and vanished from sight._

 _Harry faced forward, holding the sword before him with his right hand, then switching it to his left so he would have his right hand free for his wand after he went back through the Veil. When they reached the archway, Ron wrapped his hand around the blade just below the hilt, heedless of the sharp edge. Voldemort grasped it farther down, visibly shaking when his hand touched it. Harry wondered only for a moment if that was because he wasn't a Gryffindor. Dumbledore had said that only a true Gryffindor could have pulled the sword from the Sorting Hat._

" _Here we go," Harry said with determination._

 _They were through the Veil, standing in an open doorway, rearmed with their wands. Harry looked over his shoulder. Instead of seeing the grey lands going on forever or the Death Chamber in which the arch and Veil stood on the stone dais, he was in the circular room of doors in the Department of Mysteries where he'd been only a little earlier, though it felt like a lifetime ago._

" _The door is open," he said, smiling at Ron. He knew that it was_ the _door. He had no doubts as he strode forward into a pinkish grey fog. Unlike the greyness of the world beyond the Veil, this didn't make Harry feel flattened out, tamped down, like a mere shadow of his former self. He felt_ more _like himself than he ever had, in a way he couldn't describe. And then he heard it, coming through the fog, the sound surrounding him and becoming him:_

 _Phoenix song._

" _Wow," Ron breathed in awe. "Is Fawkes here? Is this where he went after bringing us to the Ministry?"_

" _I dunno," Harry said dreamily. He couldn't help smiling as he pushed through the fog, Ron and Voldemort still grasping the sword._

 _His enemy had been silent thus far, following when Harry moved, still holding the sword. Harry looked sideways at him. One of the reddish eyes twitched noticeably and sweat poured down his face, down the back of his head, the side of his head, past his ears. He appeared to be melting, and every time the phoenix song hit a new crescendo he winced visibly and his eye twitched spasmodically again._

 _The fog finally parted and Harry could see that they were in a country lane leading to a small village in the distance. To his right stood a homely cottage with a pretty garden on either side of the path leading to the front door. Harry smiled._

 _Ron tentatively removed his right hand from the sword and switched his wand to that hand. "Where are we, Harry?"_

 _Voldemort had also removed his hand from the sword and held his wand out warily, waiting for the "trick". For the catch. "Yes, Potter, where are we?" But he did not attack. Not yet._

 _Harry didn't know how he knew it, but he said, "The village is Godric's Hollow." He pointed toward it with the sword. "And that's my parents' house. My house."_

 _He was certain of it, no doubt in his mind. A bright orange sun shone in the western sky and a breeze moved the golden leaves on the trees arching over the lane. Twilight descended quickly but Harry could still see the autumnal asters blooming in the garden, fragrant in the fading light, and glossy green ivy climbing the cottage walls. Someone had carved a large Jack O'lantern and placed it on the step. A candle inside it guttered in the wind but consistently recovered, sending an amber glow over the stone flags of the garden path._

 _Harry felt filled with a strange surety again. "It's Hallowe'en," he whispered in wonder. He knew he was right. Yet he didn't feel horror at the thought of what was about to happen, what he knew was coming. He felt more peaceful than ever before. He knew he was exactly where he ought to be, doing what he ought to be doing. "They're about to have their tea. Come on," he said, still not knowing why he was so positive about this._

 _Suddenly they were in the house without having opened the door or walking forward. They were in the kitchen, where Lily and James Potter were having Hallowe'en tea with their one-year-old son. The kitchen had been decorated for the holiday. Jack O'lanterns of all shapes and sizes, some with cheerful, smiling countenances, some with horrible grimaces, sat on almost every horizontal surface._

 _Harry could feel the love in the room. It felt like it was permeating his body, flowing through his veins. He was love and love was him, He no longer doubted anything that Dumbledore had told him about this. He gazed at his parents and saw the way they looked at each other and at their young son. This was a house built on love._

" _Why should you want to be here, of all places?" Voldemort demanded. "You know what you are about to see. What is going to happen soon."_

 _Harry turned to him. "I didn't choose this. I chose to come through the door to this chamber. The chamber chose to show me this, I think. When does it happen?"_

" _Midnight," Voldemort hissed._

 _Harry nodded. "Of course, of course…"_

 _The chamber seemed to have sped up time. They watched the family finish their tea and clean up, put little Harry to sleep in his cot with a lullaby and a stuffed lion, followed by Lily and James Potter settling down by the fire in their sitting room. Voldemort followed all the while, watching without further comment. It both seemed to move along very quickly and take forever._

 _Suddenly they found themselves outside the house again. In the distance they could see a tall, thin hooded figure limned by moonlight. Ron bristled and Harry put his hand on his arm. "We can't stop any of this, Ron. It already happened. We're just witnesses."_

" _Like a Pensieve?"_

" _Perhaps. Except I don't think this is like anyone's Pensieve. Those memories are filtered through one person's viewpoint, aren't they? I think the chamber is showing us what happened without one point of view colouring it."_

" _But why? Why did it decide to show you something so horrible? It's bad enough you got to hear it whenever Dementors got too close."_

 _And somehow Harry knew the answer again. "It's love. It's showing me—us—love. That's all. This is what love is. We came through the door and we're getting a demonstration. It can't be explained in words, so—"_

 _To Harry's surprise, Ron nodded. "That makes sense," he said, scrutinising the approaching figure of Voldemort again._

 _The tall wizard who was nearly identical to the one beside him walked down the path to the door of the Potters' cottage. He laughed the high, cruel laugh familiar to Harry before drawing a lightning-bolt of fire on the door and blasting it in two, the jagged pieces of wood flying apart._

 _As the invasion continued, Harry watched. He had always thought that if he saw this he'd be incensed, livid, but he felt nothing for Voldemort but pity, pity that his fear of dying should come to this, trying to kill a baby and killing his mother to get to that baby, though he had agreed to spare her. He tried to imagine living with that sort of fear gripping him on a daily basis, imagine being that afraid to die, but he could not, especially after having been through the Veil._

" _I'm sorry," Harry said softly to Voldemort as he watched his father battle the fearsome wizard and fall dead, every inch a hero. He tried to think of words to explain what he was sorry for, but he could not._

" _Sorry!" Voldemort growled, clearly very agitated. His eye was twitching vigorously again. "What are you sorry for? I am killing your parents and you are telling me that you are sorry?" he demanded, his voice high and shrill._

" _I'm sorry that the prophecy made you feel threatened. Made you afraid."_

" _Afraid? I have never been afraid!" Voldemort shot back, gripping his wand tightly yet not raising it._

" _You were afraid I would kill you eventually, weren't you? That's why you tried to kill me first. I've never liked feeling afraid, especially when I've acted on it. Makes me feel like I'm going to be sick. It's horrible."_

 _Voldemort was livid but Harry could neither feel satisfaction nor happiness at this. He felt nothing but compassion and would have apologised again for making Voldemort so angry but he felt that that would simply perpetuate the cycle._

 _Phoenix song had continued in the background like a quiet musical soundtrack, but now it grew louder, as if someone had turned up the volume. Harry closed his eyes and felt like he could breathe it in, draw it deep into his lungs and live off it. He opened his eyes to see Voldemort killing his mother and then trying to kill the black-haired baby, still clutched tightly in his mother's arms as she lay on the garden path, her eyes blank and unseeing, yet also filled with love._

 _This truly is love, he thought. This is what it means, to lay down your life, to think about someone else first, not trying to keep yourself alive for life's own sake._

 _And to forgive._

 _That was it. That was what he knew he had to do. He looked at Voldemort's eerie profile. The odd red eyes and snake-slit of a nose twitched slightly as he watched the attempted murder that turned into his thirteen-year disembodiment._

 _They had to forgive each other. Well, Harry thought, it's probably more than a little unlikely that Voldemort will forgive me, but that doesn't mean I can't forgive him. It felt right, somehow. Being in the Love Chamber had made him feel like he simply knew things from the first moment he had entered, and he knew now, without an ounce of doubt, that he wasn't wrong. Even if Voldemort tried to kill him—_

 _Correction, Harry thought, finding Voldemort's wand pointed at him._ When _Voldemort decides to kill me._

" _Harry!" Ron cried._

" _Ron," Harry said calmly, never taking his eyes off Voldemort. "Remember what I told you to do. Promise me you'll do it, no matter what."_

 _Ron nodded, his eyes moist. "Oh, Harry," he said mournfully, understanding all too well what was about to happen._

 _Harry looked calmly at Voldemort, dropped his wand, and said, "It's all right. I forgive you."_

 _This seemed to incense Voldemort more than seeing himself turning into a whisp of white smoke. "You—you forgive me? Insolent whelp! Forgive this! Crucio!"_

 _Harry felt the pain, nothing that could stop that. But somehow, with the phoenix song louder than ever in his head, it was balanced out. He felt like his senses were stretched to their breaking point, experiencing, simultaneously, equal parts bliss, in the phoenix song, and pain. He was nearly overwhelmed by the combined extremes when the pain stopped and Voldemort glared at him. Ron had dropped to his knees, sobbing. Ron had always hidden his tears before._

" _Listen to the phoenix song, Ron. Just listen," he whispered with what felt like his last breath._

 _Ron nodded, silent tears running down his freckled face, his wand clutched tightly in his hand so he could Apparate away at a moment's notice._

" _Forgive that!" Voldemort sneered as the Potter cottage burned behind them and a Muggle siren blared in the village. Harry regarded him with interest._

" _I do. I forgive you for everything. You'll have to kill me to stop me forgiving you. And I forgive you in advance for that, too." Harry smiled, feeling very peaceful and calm, while Voldemort seemed to grow more agitated by the moment. Every time Harry said the word 'forgive' his eye twitched again._

" _You cannot forgive me for killing your parents, or for killing you."_

" _I can. And for luring me to the Ministry, where Bellatrix killed Sirius. I can forgive her, too. Shall I say it again? I forgive you. I forgive you. I—"_

" _Silence!" And then: "AVADA KEDAVRA!"_

 _He had evidently decided that the only way to silence Harry was to kill him. As the green light shot unspeakably quickly toward him, he whispered, one more time, "I forgive you…"_

#/#/#

"And—?" Teddy prodded him, eyes wide.

"And—well, the next thing I remember, I'm in a private room in St Mungo's, with a rather cross Healer who'd been trying to wake me for a good half-hour."

"No, I mean—what happened? Why are you alive and why did he die when he was the one cursing you?"

"I never said that he died," Harry explained calmly.

Teddy huffed impatiently. "What _happened_ _?_ Is he still alive?"

"He died a few years ago, in Azkaban, an old and broken man, devoid of magical power, a Squib known as Tom Riddle to the guards, who had no idea they were guarding He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

"Evidently, when you are forgiven, _sincerely_ forgiven by someone you are trying to murder with magic, this will cause the curse to be null and void _and_ the person doing the cursing will be stripped of his magic. They tried to teach us in school—or, at any rate, a Death Eater disguised as Mad-Eye Moody tried to tell us—that there's no blocking the Killing Curse, no shield spell or counter-spell that can protect you, but that's not strictly true. Love is the most powerful spell—the most powerful _power_ there is. It's why my mother's sacrifice, when I was a baby, saved me. Forgiveness is part of love. To forgive your murderer at the moment of death is a powerful magic all its own, and evidently quite rare, perhaps even unknown. People don't talk about it."

" _You've_ never talked about it," Teddy observed. "Why shouldn't people know that there's a way to protect yourself from the Killing Curse?"

Harry snorted. "Because most people would laugh at the idea. It seemed pointless. In fact, I shouldn't have said that no one else knew what really happened that day—there is one other person who knows: Rita Skeeter. It's true! I sat down with her for an interview after all of this, with the promise that she would tell the true story of everything that happened. She kept making this _face_ while I was talking to her. Finally, she told me that I couldn't possibly expect her to print _that._ It read like a fairy-tale. No one would believe it, even though it was the truth. I'd look like a worse liar than before my fifth year of school, when I was also telling the truth but everyone thought I was lying through my teeth. She said, 'You know why I print the stories I do, Harry? Because people want them. I give them exactly what they want. And a strong hero who gets rid of the villain through cunning and superior ability is what they want, not a boy who forgives a madman at the moment he is being murdered.'"

Harry sighed. "She was right, of course. I _hated_ that she was right, because it was _Rita_ , but she was still right. She simply wrote that 'Potter and Weasley refuse to divulge what occurred after they went through The Veil with You-Know-Who and came back without him'—which wasn't strictly true, of course, though part of it was. Everyone thought Voldemort was dead. A week later some Aurors took a feeble old man who complained any time someone called him 'Riddle' or 'Tom' up to Azkaban, where he lived in a cell all alone, with only the guards for company, claiming until he drew his last breath that he was the greatest Dark Lord who ever existed, which made the guards laugh and call him 'Mouldy Voldy' as a joke, sometimes suggesting to him that he perhaps should have been in St Mungo's instead of Azkaban, except that the Ministry insisted that he was quite dangerous, a career criminal who'd been convicted by the Wizengamott. He was, too. I insisted on it. A proper trial. He was tried and convicted of being a Death Eater, technically. It was a rather brief trial as he started off confessing to everything, if you want to call bragging a confession. But it was still a trial."

Teddy shook his head. "So he lost his magic and became a Squib, but you didn't get his power instead, did you?"

Harry laughed. "No more than I'd ever had from him, just the Parseltongue. I still have to concentrate as hard as ever to do a Summoning Charm. Unfortunately, I'm not generally being threatened with death-by-Hungarian-Horntail. That's the best way to get me to do that spell. But it's terribly inconvenient to keep an enormous fire-breathing dragon around just for that, and I don't want my children to be kidnapped by a magic carpet again just so I can do a really good job of summoning a broom, either. I've usually had to make do with getting off my bum to fetch whatever I want," he said, making his son laugh.

#/#/#

When they entered the Ministry lobby later that morning, Harry wished he'd taken a different route, any other route, to get the children there. Reporters gabbled at them and Quick-Quote Quills raced across parchment on their own, writing who-knew-what about the son of The Boy Who Lived, who was now, reportedly, the most powerful wizard in Britain—or anywhere, having been given, unwittingly, Blaise Zabini, Senior's power.

Zabini had already been taken into custody and the reporters had been repeatedly rebuffed concerning interviews with him. His son travelled to the Ministry under his own power, immediately realizing that his father's Imperius curse no longer had any power over him as soon as his father had lost his power to Teddy. He also refused to speak to reporters.

Draco Malfoy, however, was perfectly willing to give his full story to the press. He revelled in the attention, safe in the knowledge that he had already signed a deal with the Ministry. He told them absolutely everything Zabini—and his own mother—had done, though he omitted the part about Zabini being his real father. All charges against him, past and present, were dropped. At long last Malfoy would be truly free. The Ministry were only too glad to learn that Malfoy's plans for the future included leaving the country, as did his half-brother's. The fewer Malfoys—and Zabinis—they had to deal with, the better, as far as the Ministry was concerned, though they'd both been co-operative.

Over the following months the furore in the press died down. Penelope and Percy were able to go to Diagon Alley, even with Nate and Julian, without being hounded, and when they married just after the end of the summer term most of the press seemed somewhat jaded and bored with the whole affair. Harry and Ginny were relieved that Ruby and Rory had successfully completed their first year at Hogwarts, though Harry was growing weary of having to take points from Gryffindor for their repeated infractions, many of which, he knew, were inspired by Fred and George. (" _Oi! Twins, from our family? You've got to leave your mark on the place!_ ") They still liked to follow Marguerite around and emulate her as far as they were able, but as she had been Sorted into Ravenclaw, they didn't see her as much as the students in their own house. The previous September, during the Sorting, Harry hadn't been completely convinced that Ruby wouldn't be Sorted into Slytherin, but the hat called out, "Gryffindor!" just as it had with her twin a minute before.

Teddy had some difficulty adjusting to his new power, but Harry kept an eye on him, discussing the matter often with Severus, over tea. He was finally finding it possible to relate to the older man, and, for his part, Severus seemed to have got over the idea that Harry had, at one point in time, slept with his wife and produced a son, though from Harry's perspective this hadn't occurred yet. Ginny encouraged their almost-friendship, glad at last that the old Snape-Potter rift seemed to be healing. At the end of the summer term plans were even made for Nate, Teddy and Julian to all visit the Isle of Wight with Severus and Tilda, after which the three boys would come to stay at St Clare's for a little while so that Severus and Tilda could go on a holiday to Spain with her brother and his new wife. And so that Percy and Penelope could have some time alone.

As a result, the house was going to be rather full on Harry's thirty-second birthday. Ginny and the children were planning a big party in the afternoon, because in the evening Harry was expected at Draco Malfoy's stag party and Ginny was going to Pansy's hen party. He and Pansy had returned to Britain, briefly, because they were finally getting married. Pansy didn't want to do it in Gibraltar, away from her family. Draco had been unable to convince her not to return, but otherwise he seemed relatively peaceful and happy, especially with the knowledge that his mother and Zabini were safely locked up in Azkaban.

In all, Harry felt happy to celebrate Draco and Pansy marrying and living happily ever after—in Gibraltar. He'd have been even happier if they'd moved to the other side of the world, but he was still grateful that, after the wedding, they would again leave the island of Great Britain, probably for a very long time.

As far as he knew, Draco didn't plan to ever visit his mother in Azkaban.

#/#/#

Parvati was sleeping peacefully above her shop in Diagon Alley when her cat suddenly raced across her slumbering body, digging his claws into the soft skin on the back of her thigh, giving her the rudest possible awakening. After her initial scream of shock and pain, she grumbled, "Bloody hell, Phantom," to the bristling solid-grey cat still bouncing off every surface he could find, his tail the size of a bundle of broomstick twigs. But having awoken to complain to the cat and rub her painful wound, she now heard the noise in the shop that had no doubt set off the cat. _A burglar!_ she thought, a lump rising in her throat. She took her wand from the bedside table and slid her feet into her slippers, swiftly wrapping her dressing gown around her body and tying the belt.

 _He won't know what hit him,_ she thought grimly as she crept stealthily down the stairs to the shop, deftly avoiding the third step from the bottom, which squeaked. _It's not every shopkeeper in Diagon Alley who trained in Dumbledore's Army._

Of course, two other shopkeepers—Fred and George Weasley—had also done exactly that. She normally felt quite safe at night, even when she'd heard bumps and other alarming noises (the building settling, her landlord assured her). She also knew that, just across the way, Fred and George were sleeping in the flat above their own shop, which was oddly reassuring to think about, despite their carefree, happy-go-lucky ways. They'd tried living elsewhere, but always ended up back in Diagon Alley.

Each twin had, at various times, chatted her up and asked her out, but much as she liked them and was amused by their products, she didn't feel that they were really her "type". They never went without female companionship for long. Nearly every morning it seemed that they were bidding pretty girls goodbye from their front door. This had scandalised poor old Madam Malkin from the start and still did, but Parvati didn't want to be a notch on one or both of their bedposts and still try to maintain a neighbourly relationship with them. Now she almost wished that one of them had been sleeping beside her when the cat had detected the intruder.

 _No,_ she thought sternly, chastising herself. _Don't be stupid. You don't need a man for protection. Especially not one—or two—who you don't fancy. You're perfectly capable. This wanker will be sorry he ever set foot in my shop._

She pushed open the door to the shop proper, cried, "Shop lights _lumos_!" to kindle the candles in the wall sconces and stood in the doorway with her wand at the ready, hoping to startle the intruder.

She did. Her visitor collided with a display of aromatic candles and caused the shelves—and every last candle—to come crashing down. The candles were the least of her worries, though; they appeared to have been knocked down by—nothing. She could feel a presence, a familiar one, but could still see nothing except for _a foot_.

Standing in front of the shelves that had previously held the candles was a black Oxford with a foot in it. The foot wore a grey argyle sock, easily visible beneath black robes hovering about five inches above the toe of the shoe. She stepped forward cautiously, looking carefully away from where she knew the intruder to be standing, not quite hidden by an Invisibility Cloak. He clearly didn't know that part of him could be seen, because he stood stock-still, barely breathing, obviously hoping he could escape her notice.

When she was right beside him, she turned abruptly, grasped the slippery-soft material of the Cloak, and pulled it off, crying, "Aha!" as she pointed her wand at his face. However, once she got a look at him she abruptly dropped her wand and he had to grab her arm to keep her upright, she was so shocked.

He had a full head of very messy white hair but the green eyes, lightning-bolt scar and glasses were the same as ever. His skin was barely lined around the mouth and eyes, but she could see that there were some slight signs of aging there, though he was only about to turn thirty-two.

Harry looked sheepishly at her. "Hello, Parvati."

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	55. A Visit from the Minister

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Fifty-Five**

 **A Visit from the Minister**

 **#/#/#**

The white-haired Harry Potter continued to grasp Parvati's arm to keep her from falling over in shock.

"I'm sorry, Parvati. I badly miscalculated my landing when I Apparated. I probably should have planned to arrive in the Alley and rung the bell, but I didn't want to take my Cloak off outdoors and risk anyone seeing me, and if you'd looked out the window and didn't see anyone ringing the bell, you'd have just gone back to sleep again."

"Sleep!" she said as she sank into a chair. "I don't think there's any danger of _that_ ever happening again! What on earth are you doing here, Harry? And why have you done that to your hair? You'll probably not go grey—or white—until you're well over eighty or ninety, if then, so why speed up the process?"

He smiled ruefully. "Because you'd be amazed how much more respect you get when you have white hair. I've found it very useful in my current job."

"Your current job? But your current job is teaching at—" She stopped abruptly and really took in what Harry was wearing, the robes of office, the sash with the seal of the Ministry of Magic on it.

"Harry," she demanded, indignant on behalf of the person whom he was impersonating, "why are you dressed up as the Minister for Magic?" He looked down at his attire, then up at her again.

"Because I _am_ the Minister for Magic."

#/#/#

On the eve of his thirty-second birthday, Harry was alone in the drawing room at St Clare's, reading a book by the fire and listening, with some trepidation, to the squeals and exclamations coming from the twins' bedroom, where they were supposed to be preparing for sleep. Instead it seemed that they and Julian, who would be sleeping in Teddy's room along with Nate, were playing Don't Touch the Floor. He was particularly suspicious because one of the twins had just cried, "Ha! From the bed to the chest! Top that!" He shook his head, laughing as he stood. When he entered the room, all three would don expressions of extreme innocence, too, and demand, "What makes you think we're doing anything we shouldn't be?" as if he were dim.

 _Maybe I should pretend to be dim_ , he thought. He rose and walked toward the stairs, but when he reached them he had to stop short. Mad-Eye Moody's ghost had suddenly come through the wall and hovered in front of him, posed as if sitting on the lowest steps. Not wanting to walk through the ghost if he could help it, due to the cold, Harry nodded and said, "Good evening, Alastor. Erm, do you mind if I pass?"

"I need to talk to you, Potter," Moody growled, floating toward the fireplace and settling himself comfortably at the edge of the hearth, where the fire's glow gave him a slightly orange appearance on one side.

Harry grimaced, turning away from the stairs. He nodded at the ghost and sat in his favourite armchair again, saying, "Talk about what?

"It's okay, Potter," Moody said, looking sombrely at him with the ghost of his non-magical eye.

Harry frowned. "What's okay?"

"This. Me. Everything. Being a ghost. It's been okay. Never thought I'd be one, but then, never thought I'd have a reason to stick around after my time had passed. After I had passed."

Harry continued to frown. "So why _did_ you stick around? And why've you always been so interested in _me_?"

Moody turned to gaze at the fire. He held his hand before it and Harry could see the flames through the greyish-white figure. "You'll soon find out, Potter. Very soon." He looked up before shooting toward the ceiling. "I may not see you again, so good-bye, Potter."

"What? Why won't you see me again? Does this mean that you're going to stop haunting me?" he added a little hopefully, trying not to seem rude.

"I can't really say," Moody said cryptically.

"Why not?" Harry asked, tipping his head back, hoping Moody wouldn't take his curiosity as an invitation to continue hanging about.

"I can't really say why I can't really say," he said even more cryptically.

"I don't understand. What are you saying?"

"You'll know very soon," Moody said again, disappearing through the roof.

#/#/#

Parvati crossed her arms on her chest. "Did you hit your head, Harry? You think you're the Minister, you've dyed your hair white—"

"Not dyed. I'm a Metamorphmagus, remember?" He concentrated very hard, eyes closed, and the hair turned deep black again. Then he continued to concentrate and the pigment dissipated until the hair on the top of his head was pure white once more. "I'm also not about to turn thirty-two, which is, perhaps, why you are confused. I'm actually about to turn sixty-four."

"Wh-what?" she sputtered.

"I think we should go to your Reading Room and sit. It's not a very long story, but it's not very short, either."

She eyed him warily for another moment before nodding. "You first," she said, gesturing toward the bead curtain leading to the anteroom that was the buffer between the shop and the room where she did her readings. He grinned at her.

"I trained you well. Fine, I'll go first." He led the way through the gently clinking curtain and opened the door to the Reading Room, activating the candles on the walls without her help and settling himself at the table with a sigh.

 _Perhaps he really is in his sixties_ , she thought, trying to cope with this information. _Which means that wherever he came from, so am I. And so are Ginny and the twins._ That was a strange thought: Fred and George in their sixties. _Probably no less annoying,_ she thought, suddenly feeling rather cross about the way her peaceful summer's night had been shattered.

"Let me explain to you how I got to this time in general, and then this time specifically," he began, but she interrupted him.

"Is there a difference?" she asked, frowning as she took her customary chair. The crystal ball on the table reflected his familiar face grotesquely, enlarging his nose and making his cranium recede as though it only accommodated a brain the size of a walnut. _Perhaps I'm the one with a brain the size of a walnut_ , she thought, hoping she wouldn't later regret not hexing him.

"Quite a large one. To come back half my lifetime—thirty-two years—I used something called The Birthday Wish Spell. That is also what the Harry who is about to turn thirty-two will use to return to the night of his—my—sixteenth birthday. However, I knew that by this time I wouldn't have learnt about this spell, so the only way to inform me—and you—of it was to use it myself to come back here.

"I actually discovered it in a book in the Department of Mysteries almost ten years ago, but visiting myself with this information on my twenty-seventh birthday wouldn't have worked very well, since I didn't know about Teddy's existence yet. I decided to wait until I _would_ know about Teddy, but then you told me not to, because you said I was supposed to wait until my sixty-fourth birthday.

"Of course, that turned this whole thing into one of those incredibly annoying time-paradoxes, but when mucking about with time that's one of the things you have to deal with, which is just one of the many reasons that time-travel leaves such a sour taste in my mouth."

"Birthday Wish Spell," she said, frowning.

"Yes. Of course, that brought me here, because he was indeed here just at midnight, preparing to cast the spell to go back sixteen years. It was good to see that. Having seen that that would go swimmingly, however, I didn't stick around, because I knew that, in order for that to occur, I'd need a little additional time to get everything in order. I used _this_ to come back a couple of extra hours," he said, taking a small hourglass on a chain from inside his shirt.

"A Time-Turner!" Parvati gasped. "But Hermione told me they were all—"

"—destroyed. Yes, they were. But there _are_ perks to being the Minister for Magic. Such as asking the Unspeakables to research and try to build just one more Time-Turner, which shall be destroyed as soon as I return to the future. They had almost ten years to do it, which turned out to be nearly not enough. But I was able to test it, finally, the day before yesterday, and it worked perfectly, so I knew I was ready to come here. If I'd needed to wait another day I could have, and turned the hourglass back twenty-six times instead of twice, but fortunately, that wasn't necessary.

"When I used the Time Turner, it behaved as if I were the Harry in _this_ time. Which makes sense although I was not expecting it. After turning it twice, I ended up at St Clare's, fortunately still wearing my Invisibility Cloak. However, what I had forgotten was that, living or dead, my Cloak was never an impediment to Mad-Eye Moody, who, of course, spotted me immediately. I managed to convince him not to give me away and we conferred, privately, on what was going to occur. I also apologised deeply to him, but he insisted that it wasn't necessary. He told _him_ that, too."

"Him?"

"Harry. Young Harry. And then he left." He paused thoughtfully. "Other than seeing him when I went back to my sixteenth birthday, that was the last time in my life that I saw old Moody. His ghost, at any rate. He isn't even haunting Hogwarts. I don't know where ghosts go after they decide they've had enough of hanging about this world, but wherever it is, he's gone there, I assume. And then I Apparated here, but I miscalculated and broke that lovely crystal ball near the candles…"

"It's from the Czech Republic," she said, nettled. "And the noise terrified my cat, Phantom."

"Czech crystal?" He made a clucking sound with his tongue. "I'm truly sorry, Parvati. I know how dear that must be. Fifty Galleons? Seventy-five?"

"Over a hundred, actually. Can we get back to the matter at hand? What exactly are you doing _here_? Why not tell Harry himself what he has to do?"

He shook his head grimly. "Never a good idea, for someone to encounter himself while time-traveling. And yes, that happens to thirty-two-year-old me when he goes—when I go—back. You already know how disastrous that was." He sighed. "I need you to be my go-between. You helped me to work out that I'd been memory-charmed by adult-me, when I was sixteen. You know the lay of the land in all this. And I know that you can perform memory charms as well. You told me that you've occasionally resorted to it to erase traumatic memories from your clients' minds, at their request. Or when they've had a particularly bad fortune told and decided that they didn't want to know their future after all, they'd rather be in the dark about it, instead of dreading some horrible day coming closer and closer. However, the memory charm I'm going to tell you about will specifically erase about half of young Harry's life—temporarily. This way he won't be able to give away information about the future. And he won't remember that he is married."

Parvati gasped. "Because if he remembered being married to Ginny—"

He nodded. "Precisely. This is how it has to be."

She sighed. "You seem to have forgotten something. Harry and Ginny aren't on the Floo Network. I'll have to Apparate to a spot near their house, trudge through the grounds, knock on their door, hope they're not already asleep…"

"No need," he said, pulling a small silver device from his pocket. "I've come prepared. After I left St Clare's I stopped at a shop here in London and, erm, 'persuaded' the shop-keeper to let me borrow his mobile for a day."

"You used Imperius?" she whispered fiercely, as if worried that someone would overhear their conversation.

"Rather that than stealing it, which he would just report, and as soon as he did it would be useless. A necessary evil that isn't hurting anyone. It will be returned to him after we no longer have need of it. I've already placed one call, to verify that it works." He flipped open the top of the mobile and handed it to her. "Harry's number is right there. Just press the little green button to call him." He shook his head. "I know you can conjure a lovely Patronus, but using that to send a message will usually just panic the person you're sending it to. And since not everyone is as good at creating a Patronus as you are, I don't know why more witches and wizards don't have mobiles. Dead useful. You can't carry a fireplace around in your pocket."

#/#/#

"What does _that_ mean?" Harry shouted after Moody, though he didn't expect to get an answer.

At that moment, his mobile rang in his pocket. Moody stuck his head back inside and nodded at him. "It means answer your bloody mobile and you'll find out." With that, he disappeared through the roof of St Clare's again.

Harry's mobile continued to play its festive tune and he checked the small screen. Whoever it was didn't want to be identified, which made him feel tempted not to answer, but Moody's instructions finally prompted him to press the small button with the green telephone on it and say, "Hello?"

"Harry? Oh, thank goodness, Harry. It's Parvati."

"Parvati? What on earth? When did you get a mobile?"

#/#/#

Parvati bit her lip and paused for a moment before answering. "I, erm…it's borrowed," she finally said. Which was true. "I needed to talk to you and you're not on the Floo Network, so—"

"Why did you need to talk to me so desperately? Listen, tomorrow is my birthday and Malfoy's stag party, and the day after is the wedding itself, so I need my rest."

"Well, you should make the wedding, but you'll have to skip the stag party. And your birthday," she said, biting her lip again.

She could hear him hesitate. "Why? Not that I was terribly eager to go to Draco Malfoy's stag party, but what's going on?"

"Please, Harry. You need to come to my shop. Right away."

He sighed noisily into the phone. "Right _now_? Can't this wait until the morning?"

"No, no!" she said desperately. "The morning is definitely too late. You _have_ to come _now_. Please, Harry!"

Silence. Finally, he said, "You know I like you, Parvati. But this is strange. Why do you need me to come to your shop right now?"

She lifted her eyes to the other Harry Potter, sitting at the round table where her crystal ball and Tarot cards lay. She was still getting used to the fact that he had the same vivid green eyes as Harry, the same dark brows and round glasses, as well as the same messy hair, except for being completely white, and the same lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, peeking through the white fringe. He smiled and nodded kindly at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners ever so slightly. She turned away from him and closed her eyes.

"It's time, Harry."

#/#/#

"What do you mean you're going out?"

Ginny looked up from the letter she was writing to Charlie. The tea she'd been drinking sat by her elbow on the scrubbed kitchen table and Harry noticed that she was using his favourite eagle-feather quill, which was also her favourite.

"Didn't you hear what Moody was saying?"

"I heard you shouting at Moody, but I was trying to concentrate on what I wanted to write to Charlie, not eavesdropping on you and our resident ghost."

"And my mobile rang."

"Yes, I heard that, too. What's going on, Harry?" she wanted to know, her brow furrowing. He sat opposite her, glancing around their kitchen for a moment, trying to imprint the image of their home on his mind.

"Do you remember when Parvati worked out that I'd had a memory charm put on me? _By_ me, a me who was travelling through time, back to the night of my sixteenth birthday?" Ginny put down the quill and swallowed, nodding slowly. "Well, it's time. It's supposed to be tonight, just after midnight. Parvati just called me."

"Parvati has a mobile?" Ginny brushed this question away a moment later, saying, "Sorry, I shouldn't be distracted by that. How does she know it's supposed to be tonight?"

Harry took a deep breath. "She wouldn't tell me. She just says that it's time."

"And how on earth are you supposed to travel back in time sixteen years, anyway?" she demanded. "Even if all of the Time-Turners hadn't been destroyed, you'd need to spend a whole day, if not more, turning it over and over to go back _one_ year!"

Her voice shook and Harry wanted to take her in his arms and reassure her, but he suddenly felt that he didn't have the right. The one thing neither of them had brought up—that he was going back in time to sleep with Tilda, so that she would conceive Teddy and the current timeline would be maintained—hung in the air between them, the proverbial sixteen-ton hippogriff in the room.

"I don't know. She doesn't seem worried by that. She wants me to come to her shop in an hour so that we can discuss what I'm going to do. To avoid my giving away things that will happen in the future she's going to put another memory charm on me, a very selective temporary one. I'll remember all of my life up until I'm around sixteen—perhaps slightly older, actually, since it's not precise down to the day—but that's it. I won't remember things like going through the Veil with Ron and Voldemort, marrying you, our kids…"

"So that's how it's to be," she said quietly. "That makes sense, I reckon. I've wondered, from time to time, how you could just go back to that night and shag another woman in cold blood, do it knowing that you're married. I wondered whether you did it because we had divorced by that time, or you'd grown tired of me and wanted to hark back to your youth. But you won't remember me at all, except as Ron's little sister…" Her voice had become nearly inaudible and unshed tears made her eyes shine.

Harry's heart ached. _How can I do this to her_? But he didn't have a choice. The last time he'd even _thought_ , for a moment, that he could never bring himself to do such a thing, Charlotte had become Splinched, stuck half-way through her cot. A Healer from St Mungo's had hurried out to the house to take care of her, and she'd spent the next day in the children's ward of the hospital, for observation. To say nothing of how he'd had to dance around the reason that Teddy had, temporarily, become a ghost-like wraith. For the second time. Ginny knew that he had to do this eventually. But it had always been theoretical, something in the distant, indistinct future. Not something that was going to happen in an hour or two— _now_.

"So," he said, bracingly, trying not to think about what she'd just said. "I'm going to change my clothes and get ready to leave for Diagon Alley. I'm sorry that I'll be missing my birthday party tomorrow, but on the other hand, at least I don't have to go to Malfoy's stag party," he said a little too loudly, too jovially, trying too hard to put a good face on it.

She looked at him in distress. "You're going alone?"

"Erm, of course. Do you _really_ want to be there, Ginny? And anyway, once she puts the spell on me, it could rather be a giveaway for me to see you."

"Then I'll make certain that you don't," she said stoutly. "But—I do want to go with you. I can wait in Parvati's shop while she puts the memory charm on you and you—you do whatever you're going to do to travel back sixteen years."

He wondered for a moment whether she would try to talk him out of doing it. He had a feeling that if she did he would comply, and then where would they be? "You _do_ know, Ginny, that I _have_ to do this? We can't risk what would happen if I didn't. It would be—"

"—a disaster. Yes, yes, I know," she said miserably, then laughed ruefully, humourlessly. It was a dreadful sound. "How many wives get to send their husbands off to sleep with another woman, knowing that he'll be saving the world by doing so?"

She was crying freely now. "Oh, Ginny, don't do this to yourself." He walked around the table and pulled her to her feet, holding her tightly as she sobbed into his chest. He couldn't prevent the tears running down his own face.

"I love you, Ginny, I love you so much. I'm glad she suggested the memory charm, because I don't see how I could possibly do this if I remembered how much I love you. You understand that, yeah?" he said, searching her tear-streaked face. She nodded and put her head on his chest again. He tightened his arms around her and said, "I just wish this were over. I hate time-travelling. I never want to do it again after this."

She nodded. "I'm not especially fond of it myself and I've never done it." She tried to smile but he could see how half-hearted it was.

"We should talk to the boys, let them know we're going to be out for a little bit. Well, that _you're_ going to be out for a little bit and that I'll have to miss my birthday party tomorrow. I'm sure Nate and Teddy can handle Julian and the girls. Charlotte's already asleep and we'll see to it that Ruby and Rory are also in bed before we go."

Ginny agreed and Harry watched her leave the kitchen to call to Teddy and Nate so that they could discuss what was going to happen. Harry gripped the back of a chair, seeing blurrily through his teary eyes the letter that Ginny had started writing to her brother. All was well, everyone was happy, they were going to have a party for Harry's birthday…

He sighed, turning away from the cheerful letter, wondering whether he—or Ginny—would ever feel that cheerful again.

#/#/#

After talking to Harry on the mobile—the Harry who was the same age she was—Parvati paced the floor, restless with waiting. Then something occurred to her. "Wait—you said that I told you about memory-charming clients. When did I tell you that?" she demanded of the white-haired Harry.

He looked thoughtful. "It was about fifteen years ago." He looked away. "I was—very sad. And you asked me whether I wanted a memory charm. But some things—or people—should never be forgotten, even when remembering them is enormously painful. You were just trying to help."

She swallowed. "Someone who—who died?"

He nodded before standing and putting on his Invisibility Cloak once more. "I shouldn't be out in the open when they arrive. You did tell him to bring his Cloak, if I recall correctly?"

"Yes, yes, I did as you said. He should be bringing the Invisibility Cloak." She paused again, finding conversation with a sixty-four-year-old Harry Potter more than a little disconcerting. "And what do you mean by _they_?"

She watched the door open and close but didn't hear the bead curtain rustle; he was still in the anteroom. She opened the door to go after him, but a moment later there was a double pop as Harry and Ginny arrived just outside the anteroom, holding hands and looking very pale.

After greeting them and ushering them into the Reading Room, Parvati turned to Ginny, her stomach squirming inside her at the thought of helping her husband cheat on her. "Harry, you should give your wedding ring to Ginny to hold for you." Harry nodded and slowly took off the ring, putting it in Ginny's hand and wrapping her hand around it. Ginny's eyes glistened and Parvati didn't know how much more she could take. "I also think—you should probably wait out in the shop, Ginny. There's a couch over near the Astrology books. I've given up on people actually _buying_ them. They seem to think I'm running an Astrology library where they can just pop in and read their horoscope for the day, then pop out again without paying me so much as a Knut."

Ginny smiled grimly. "Of course." She stood on her toes to kiss Harry's cheek. "I'll see you—well, after your birthday, I reckon."

But Harry wasn't going to let her get away with that. He pulled her to him and kissed her deeply, wrapping his arms firmly around her. Parvati turned away, giving them some semblance of privacy, but since the door to the anteroom was still open and she still hadn't heard the bead curtain rustle, except for when Harry and Ginny entered from the shop, she knew that there was another person who could also see them.

Harry finally released her. "I love you. Don't forget that."

She nodded, looking like she was trying not to cry. "I love you, too," she whispered before turning and practically running through the anteroom and into the shop. Parvati waited a moment before firmly closed the door, hoping with all her heart that she really was doing the right thing.

#/#/#

Harry watched Ginny race across the floor of the shop to the purple velvet couch, throwing herself onto it and sobbing into a small square cushion, her shoulders wracking convulsively. _So young_ , he thought. _She's still so young. Not quite thirty-one._ The bead curtain was still waving and making noise from her having passed through it, so he felt safe in quickly brushing against it to exit the anteroom, watching her, longing to touch her, to speak to her, to hold her in his arms.

It had been such a long time. Why was life so cruel? They should have been together for life. Well, they were. The rest of _her_ life, at any rate. He hadn't expected to feel this way, to feel the loss so freshly upon seeing her…

But all at once she was on her feet, wiping the tears from her eyes with a determined expression. "This is stupid," she said to no one, hugging herself as though that were the only thing keeping her from flying to pieces. " _I'm_ stupid." And with a wave of her wand and a very quiet popping noise, she was gone.

He frowned, resisting the urge to do a tracing spell on what remained of her aura so that he could learn where she had gone. If he waited any longer the aura would dissipate and it would be too late. But he stayed where he was, telling himself that she was gone, she was dead and gone and he _knew_ that he'd be seeing her again tonight, should have prepared himself for it.

But there wasn't truly a way to prepare for such a thing.

#/#/#

Ginny raised her hand and knocked softly on the rough panelled door. She didn't know how many other guests Old Tom might have this summer's night, but she didn't want to wake anyone else staying in the Leaky Cauldron. She only wanted to wake one person.

She heard shuffling footsteps and the knob turned. "Ginny!" he said, clearly shocked to see her. He hadn't tied the belt of his dressing gown before answering the door, but he did now, so she could no longer see his boxers. She could still see his legs, though, and she raised her eyes to his, feeling her face grow hot.

"Hello, Theo."

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	56. Birthday Wishes

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Fifty-Six**

 **Birthday Wishes**

 **#/#/#**

"Repeat it," Parvati said, her voice shaking.

Harry nodded. "I'm—I'm about to turn thirty-two. I only remember living about—well, more than half of that time, because I have a memory of going to Auror training yesterday. Am I an Auror?" he asked.

"Damn. It didn't take as many years off your memory as it should have," she mumbled.

"Well, it sort of did. I mean, after sixteen, my memory's a little spotty. I'm not really clear on where I live, for instance, or what I ate yesterday. And all of this is because I'm going to travel back in time to my sixteenth birthday?"

"Yes, and even though you're going to do that you have to avoid being seen by your sixteen-year-old self."

"So. The Invisibility Cloak," he said, holding it up.

"Right. You _may_ speak to Tilda, however, when you get there. She knows all about this. Do you want to look over the Birthday Wish Spell again?"

He shook his head. "No, it seems pretty straightforward. But tell me again why I'm doing this?"

She drew her lips into a line. "I'm sorry, Harry. I can't. That would be telling you the future."

"No, it would be telling me the _present_ , but all right." He sounded cross. "And I _have_ to do this—"

"—because we already know that you did this and you did some stuff when you travelled through time that, if you don't do it, will change time and destroy the world of the last sixteen years," she said in a rush.

"But you can't tell me the things that I did."

"Right."

He sighed and glanced down at the spell again. "And you're thirty-two now? And you have a Divination business?"

"Yes, Harry. Listen, the clock just chimed for midnight. You need to do the spell." He lifted his wand and looked at the parchment with the spell written on it. He'd just opened his mouth when Parvati cried, "Wait! Put on the Invisibility Cloak!" Once he'd disappeared under the Cloak he was ready. Though she couldn't see him, she could hear him saying the words of the spell.

Out of nowhere, a tornado seemed to have been generated inside her small Reading Room; she was knocked to the floor by her own chair rising up and striking her painfully in the shoulder. The last thing she remembered was a heavy book that had been resting peacefully on the table flying right at her head, and after that all was blackness.

#/#/#

Harry felt as if his body was being wrenched apart, molecule by molecule, but because he was no longer a coherent whole, there was no physical way for him to scream. He assumed that if he'd been accepted for Auror training that he'd learned to Apparate, and he had a strange, vague memory of it—but this was neither like Apparating nor travelling by Portkey. He wondered whether he had made a dreadful mistake, whether he'd managed to blow himself up, but he also had a bad feeling that thinking that was a sure way to make it happen.

 _It's going to be all right,_ he tried to tell himself, wishing he were a better liar. _I don't even believe myself._

 _No!_ He tried to put a stop to the pessimism. _I'm going to go back to my sixteenth birthday and see Tilda. It's going to be fine._

But the feeling of being pulled apart in a thousand different directions continued, and he wasn't certain it was possible to think of anything other than pain, pain beyond unearthly pain…

He thought he was hallucinating at first, seeing his life flashing before his eyes prior to his death. The pain continued unabated, but as the images before him became clearer, he realized that he was seeing _Tilda's lounge._ Moreover, he was seeing his sixteen-year-old self in Tilda's lounge. Sixteen-year-old Harry was watching television, his arms crossed on his bare chest. He looked more than a little out of sorts and Harry's first instinct was to be embarrassed at ever having had such a petulant expression on his face.

 _It worked!_ he realised. _I'm here, I'm really here._ He stared even more critically at his younger self now. God, how had he ever thought Tilda could be interested in him? How had Cho or any girl _ever_ thought that she wanted to be with him?

His younger self was so thin Harry thought he could count the ribs under the almost translucent skin. He'd eaten fairly well since he'd come to be at Tilda's, after she had discovered him, but when he'd been living with the Dursleys he was back on bare-minimum rations, which amounted to perhaps one-fourth of the food he'd been accustomed to eating each day at Hogwarts, let alone the huge piles of food Mrs Weasley always made for him. Plus, he hadn't had much appetite to speak of after Sirius. That was yet another reason why he hadn't felt like he'd missed the leaving feast at the end of term.

 _Sirius_. His godfather's death hit him suddenly, like a blow to the gut, winding him. His mind was a jumble; he could only remember random snatches here and there of anything from his life since the age of sixteen. It was a strange sort of amnesia, because he remembered _being_ sixteen very vividly, so much so that it was painful. He hadn't realised how emotionally _fraught_ everything seemed when he was that age. _Why do I want to relive this again_? he asked himself.

He looked again at young Harry. All he could think of was how much he loved Tilda, how much he had wanted her when he was sixteen, how much he wanted her _now_. As the grumpy sixteen-year-old Harry slumped lower and lower in his seat on the couch, his eyelids began to close. Harry watched his younger self, his heart beating painfully in his chest, the waiting becoming quite unbearable. Finally, the boy's eyes were closed and his head slumped. A string of saliva connected the corner of his mouth to his shoulder. Very carefully, Harry turned off the television. The abrupt silence made him wish he hadn't, however, for now he realized that there would be no noise to cover his exit and the sound of his climbing the stairs.

Young Harry had dropped off while still wearing his glasses. Harry carefully reached out, the Invisibility Cloak gently caressing his hand, and removed them from his own amazingly young face. It showed no signs, in repose, of the turmoil that filled his life. Only the scar suggested that Harry had not had as quiet and uneventful an existence as the other residents of Little Whinging.

After he placed the glasses on a table close by young Harry's left hand, he carefully edged toward the stairs. Just as he was lifting his foot to step on the first tread, his younger self snuffled and turned over in his sleep, so he was in an awkward half-on-the-couch, half-off posture. Harry held his breath, waiting. Finally, the boy's breathing sounded deep and regular and Harry again attempted to climb the stairs. When he reached the top, he let out a long, relieved breath and went to the door of Tilda's bedroom, hesitating for a moment. What if she had locked it? But the knob turned easily, with a silent click he could feel under his hand.

To his surprise, Tilda was nowhere to be seen. He closed the door behind him, hearing a moment later the flush of the toilet, followed by running water. He paced the room nervously, still concealed by the Invisibility Cloak. What would he say to her? How could he explain his presence in her house at the age of thirty-two, rather than sixteen?

He was still vacillating, trying to decide how to approach this, when the door opened and she entered, once again wearing just an oversized man's shirt, rather than the T-shirt and jogging shorts she'd worn when she was sharing the room with young Harry. Harry drew in his breath at the sight of her, making more noise than he'd intended. She froze before looking warily around the room with narrowed eyes. He practically jumped out of his skin when she abruptly turned on her heel and swung the door open again, stomping to the head of the stairs. From where he still stood in the bedroom he could see that she was bending over the railing, peering down the staircase into the hall. She frowned, straightened up again, and walked at a more sedate pace back to the bedroom, closing the door again.

She climbed into her bed, shaking her head, a half-smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. "Stupid, I'm just being stupid, he's fast asleep," she muttered to herself. Harry swallowed, glad that she had just checked on his younger self. It might make this far easier.

" _Tilda_ ," he whispered hoarsely. She had been about to put her head on the pillow but now she opened her eyes wide and sat bolt upright.

"H-Harry?" she breathed, looking very confused. "I—I don't understand. I—I just saw you downstairs." She glanced around the room, still not knowing where he was.

Harry took a deep breath and pulled off the Invisibility Cloak.

Tilda screamed shrilly upon seeing him suddenly appear beside her and Harry tried to put his hand over her mouth, but she bit him and continued screaming. He cried out himself and started shaking his hand in pain. Finally, unable to think of any other way to quiet her—and because kissing her was very fresh in his mind—he lowered his mouth to hers.

This turned out to be a terrible idea. She pulled away and slapped him hard across the face. His skin still stinging and his bitten fingers aching, he grabbed her by both wrists and hissed, " _Please, Tilda. Don't scream again. I need to talk to you._ "

"But—but—but—" she stammered, as though stuck. She pulled her wrists from his grasp and rubbed them, staring but mercifully not screaming. "I don't understand," she finally managed to say. "You—you're _Harry_? But—but you look—"

"Well, I'm not sixteen anymore, am I?" he said reasonably.

"You tell me!" she snapped, clearly irritated. "And how can you be _here_ , looking like _this_ , and _there_ ," she said, pointing at the floor, "at the same time?"

He swallowed and took a deep breath. "I travelled back through time. When I left, it was my thirty-second birthday. I cast a special spell that allowed my birthday wish to come true. A wish to come back in time exactly half my lifetime."

He smiled sheepishly at her. She stared at him with her mouth open in disbelief, speechless. However, a moment later, he heard footsteps on the stairs and swore under his breath.

"Damn! I forgot. It'll be okay. He'll be gone in a minute." He pulled his Cloak over his head again, disappearing from her view. A moment later there was a knock on the door and Harry's young voice was heard:

"Tilda? Are you all right? I heard you scream."

Tilda jumped when she felt the Cloak brush against her arm and legs; very close to her, Harry's thirty-two-year-old voice whispered, " _Tell him you stubbed your toe and you're all right now_."

She moved her mouth without making a sound for a few moments before clearing her throat and saying, "I—I'm fine, Harry. Go back downstairs. I just stubbed my toe. I'm going to sleep now. Good night."

There was a pause before the young Harry's voice was heard saying, "Oh. Okay, then. Good—good night." There was no mistaking how disappointed he sounded. His footsteps receded and then thudded briefly on each step as he descended to the lounge again. Harry sighed with relief, walking to the door and locking it before leaning against it and removing the Invisibility Cloak once more.

"I should have remembered that, but my head is in such a muddle right now…"

She stood before him, her hands on her hips, looking very put-out. "Should have remembered _what_? And how do I know you're really Harry? How do I know you're not some evil wizard come here to try to hurt him, or me? How do I know what side you're on? Perhaps I _should_ scream again and get him back up here!" she said, pointing a shaking finger at the floor.

He thought about it for a few seconds before saying, "No. You won't."

Tilda raised one eyebrow. "Oh, I won't? And how do _you_ know I won't?"

He shrugged. "Because you didn't. It's coming back to me now a little more clearly."

"I still don't understand. What do you mean it's 'coming back' to you? Coming back from _where_?"

"I mean that I'm remembering more specific things instead of just general stuff. After all, sixteen years ago—well, sixteen years ago for me—that was me who knocked on the door and asked you if you were all right. And I can tell you that after I went back downstairs I sat on the couch in the lounge sulking and, well—" He felt himself redden. She frowned.

"What? What were you going to say?"

He clamped his mouth shut and looked down at her legs, then up at her rather angry face again. "Well, I spent the night thinking about _you_ , didn't I? And what we almost—"

Her jaw dropped open. "We did _not_ almost _anything_! We kissed, that was all, and I put a stop to that!"

"You did," he conceded, "but—well, you're the one who started taking my clothes off—"

This turned out to be the wrong thing to say. She turned a very deep shade of red and hissed at him, "I am _not_ a child molester. Is that what this is all about? Are you just pretending to be Harry, using some magic spell to travel here from the future so you can find out whether I did anything inappropriate with him? Well I _didn't_. At least," she conceded, "nothing other than kissing. Just a _little_ kissing, that is. And—and okay," she admitted, "I did _start_ to take his—your—his shirt off," she stammered, trailing off in confusion.

"No, I'm not a time-travelling Auror. I—I really did make a birthday wish," he said. "Just like I said. I made a wish to come back to where I was on my sixteenth birthday."

He came closer to her and reached out his hand to her. After a moment's hesitation, she reached out her hand as well. His heart swelled to feel her thin fingers in his grasp and she looked up at him in wonder.

"It's—it's really _you_? And—and you're thirty-two years old?"

He smiled at her. "Yes. It's really me. We're the same age now." She laughed and pulled her hand from his grasp, running her hands through her hair and sitting in the chair near the wardrobe. He continued to smile at her. "What's so funny?"

She looked up at him, shaking her head. "It's just that—I'm not sure whose birthday wish was granted, yours or mine. I was actually wishing that you were older, that you were my age. You don't know how hard it was to walk away from you downstairs, Harry. It—it was the hardest thing I've ever done."

Tears started spilling down her cheeks and he crouched beside the chair, taking her hands in his. "I know, Tilda, I know. And I have to admit—I had a perfectly miserable night, sitting down there alone, thinking of you up here alone, in your bed…"

A sudden realisation seemed to sweep over her and she stood, aghast. "Is _that_ why you're here, then? Came to finish what we started? Thought I'd just leap into your arms and start ripping your clothes off?"

He swallowed, standing and backing up. "No, no! Of course not."

 _Well, maybe…_

"Because I'm not like that! You can't—you can't just—" she sputtered, shaking her finger in his face.

"No, no, I didn't—I wasn't—"

"Because even though you're the same person—technically you're _not_! I'm not in love with _you_ , I'm in love with _him!_ And yes, I know that isn't right. But I'm trying to deal with that in my own way, without being a dirty old woman, and your being here is _definitely_ not helping!"

He swallowed, not having anticipated this. But he nodded. She had a point. It was stupid to think that she'd substitute him for his younger self. If that was even why he'd travelled through time.

"Sorry, I just—I just wanted to see you again, and the birthday wish spell takes you back exactly half your lifetime, so this is the only time I'd ever be able to do this and end up here, on this night. Can we just talk? I think if we could talk, I'd understand better why you were so afraid."

" _Afraid_? Oh, it's all my fault, is it? Because I didn't want to lose my job and have to move away, let alone being questioned by the police and branded a dirty old—"

"You're _not_ a dirty old woman. Stop saying that." He looked at her gently. "First: I don't blame you for pulling back from me. Frankly, I think that having something new to be miserable about did me some good. At least I wasn't worrying about becoming a murderer or a victim, or dwelling on how it was my fault that Sirius died. But even though I can't remember anything of my present life, I have this nagging feeling that leaving Little Whinging and even your teaching job wouldn't be as scary as you might think. You might be pleasantly surprised."

She scrutinised him suspiciously. "Are you telling me something about my future?"

"No! No, I—I'm definitely not supposed to be doing that, and I didn't intend to. I _couldn't_ even if I wanted to, because of this memory charm that's made me forget just about everything after I was sixteen. I'm just saying that if that's what's frightening you—"

She paced, running her hands through her hair again. "Oh, I see how it is. You came here to get me to go downstairs and finish what I started with _him_. With _young_ you."

"No!" he cried, grabbing her by the shoulders. "Whatever you do, _don't_ do _that_!"

She shook him off, still looking at him with deep suspicion. "Why not?" she said slowly. "It would still be you, you'd have the memory of it—"

"But I _shouldn't_!" he exclaimed. "If you did that—you'd be changing time! I'm supposed to spend tonight downstairs in your lounge, alone, feeling sorry for myself. I'm definitely _not_ supposed to be having sex for the first time, let alone with _you_."

She frowned. "Fine. Good. I didn't say I was _going_ to, for heaven's sake. I was just assuming that was why you came here." She crossed her arms and looked a bit sheepish.

He stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders. "I know you're a good person, Tilda. And even though I did resent you for doing the right thing, I also got over it and went on with my life."

"Went on with your life? Does that mean—you did it? You—you killed him?" Harry clamped his mouth tightly, glancing around nervously, as though the sight of something in her bedroom might give him a clue about what he might tell her.

"I really don't know. Since I'm here, that seems likely. But I can't say anything about the future, and because of the memory charm I don't know the full story myself."

"Well, if you've supposedly gone on with your life then how is it you're still obsessed with what happened between us sixteen years later?" she went on in disbelief.

"I—I'll try to explain. It's not that I'm obsessed, it's—well, it's a long story." He didn't know what else he could say.

She backed up from him. "Yes, I'll just bet it _is_ hard to explain stalking me back through sixteen years, half your lifetime." Her voice shook and he could tell that she was frightened. He wondered whether he _had_ travelled back through time to sleep with her, and he was hoping very hard that that wasn't it, because he would have to feel very, very ashamed if it was.

"What's the word?" he asked vaguely, rapping his head with his knuckles. "Closure! That's it. I need—closure." _That must be it,_ he thought. Otherwise why would Parvati have had him do this? That and maintaining the timeline.

She snorted. "You sound like a bad pop psychologist. Honestly! That's why you came to see me tonight, for closure? You couldn't have got that with the forty-eight-year old version of me?" Her eyes flew open. "Unless—oh, God, am I not alive in sixteen years?"

Harry squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears with his hands, humming loudly. He was surprised when she pulled his hands away from his ears and hissed at him, "Listen to me! Am I alive in sixteen years?" Her eyes were wide with fear and he stared helplessly at her, causing her to deflate a little. "Oh, God, that's why you've come back to see me? Because you can't see me in your time anymore…"

Her voice caught and Harry cradled her face in his hands. "No," he said adamantly. "I shouldn't tell you anything about the future, but it's little enough to tell you this: I do think you're still alive in sixteen years." He swallowed; he wasn't lying, not exactly. He had no reason to think that was why he'd come back through time to see her. For some reason his mind conjured up an image of Tilda in the Great Hall at Hogwarts. _But that's ridiculous. It must be Luna, all grown up._ Yes, that was probably it, a stray memory of Luna had slipped through. But he still had no real reason to believe she'd died before her forty-eighth birthday, so he didn't think of reassuring her as lying.

She looked like she was still deciding whether to believe him. He continued to cradle her face in his hands, the urge to kiss her very strong. He took his shaking hands away, however, standing up straight and hoping that whatever he was supposed to do, he would still be able to do it. The last thing he remembered of his adult life, before he cast the birthday wish spell, was Parvati telling him that he _needed_ to do this because he already had, and if he didn't, _then_ he'd be changing time. He hoped he would somehow know to do whatever was necessary to preserve the world he had come from.

The world he had now forgotten.

How would he _know_ if he had succeeded? Would he get his memories back? He hoped so. It was very frustrating to be working in the dark, to know nothing but that he loved Tilda yet, very deeply, and that he would do anything for her.

"Harry?"

He'd let his mind wander and suddenly an enormous yawn overtook him. He glanced at the bed. "I don't suppose—could I sleep here? I don't think I'm in the habit of staying up this late recently. Getting to be an old man," he added, grinning.

She hit him on the arm playfully. "Well, then, now that we're the same age, what does that make me?"

He grinned at her, then looked her up and down slowly, his breath catching. "It makes you an utterly beautiful old woman," he told her softly. Her lip trembled and he wondered whether he was breaking down her defences. And then he questioned whether he _wanted_ to. He felt the twinge of guilt again, wondering whether he was there to seduce her. How would he know what was the right thing to do while he was in this time? Whether his actions were preserving or changing the timeline?

He couldn't know.

He just had to act on faith.

He held his hand out to her and she took it without question. He led her to the bed and sat, patting the mattress beside him. "Let's talk, like we used to, until we fall asleep," he said quietly. "I mean—surely there's something about the first sixteen years of my life I didn't get a chance to tell you in the last fortnight."

"And what about secrecy and not telling Muggles about magic and all that?" she said, sitting beside him and raising one eyebrow.

He shrugged. "I'm already travelling through time to be here. In for a penny, in for a pound, wouldn't you say? Besides, _he's_ the one who's not supposed to tell you about magic, which is rather a moot point now." She laughed and he stared at her. "What?"

" _Moot point._ You _are_ all grown up, aren't you? I can't imagine you—er, him—saying that."

He nodded and smiled. "Well, my memory's been altered, to make it difficult for me to divulge information about the future, but I reckon my speech isn't affected by that."

"I'm sorry, I interrupted. You were saying?" she said softly, turning to face him. Harry drew in his breath; she was as beautiful as he remembered.

"Erm…oh, right. I was saying—worrying about _him_ telling you about magic is a moot point since he already did. My big taboo is telling about the future."

She nodded. "I understand." She sighed. "You know, actually, it would be wonderful to talk. I had hoped to talk to you—him—some more tonight. I didn't count on—on _kissing_ getting in the way of that. I like talking to you—him." Her smile was heartbreaking. He couldn't take his eyes off her. "Obviously I couldn't stay downstairs and propose that we just _talk_ after—well, after—"

"Right," he said softly. What was happening? Their faces seemed to be moving closer and closer together…

Suddenly he drew back and said, "So. Talking. Yes. That's what we're going to do. Talk. Erm. Right."

 _God, I sound like an idiot,_ he thought nervously. But he had _so_ wanted to kiss her moments before and they'd just finished agreeing that that was what had got in the way of her continuing to talk to sixteen-year-old Harry.

He pulled himself back toward the headboard and propped some pillows behind his head, folding his hands on his stomach. "Come on. Let's just sit back and talk."

#/#/#

Tilda swallowed and looked at him. Harry leaned against the headboard as though he were made of stone. She couldn't believe how very close she had come to going back on her resolution to not just give in to this _man_ , this amazingly grown up version of Harry.

When she'd first laid eyes on him she'd thought she was hallucinating. She'd been wondering just that morning what Harry would look like as a man, even wishing that he were her age, and now here he was! She wondered if her own fragile wish had had some effect on the time-travelling spell Harry had cast, whether that had come into play at all. When he'd removed the Cloak, it was like being in a strange dream. The Harry she'd kissed was taller than she was, but this one was taller still. When he smiled at her a _maturity_ shone behind his green eyes that was arresting, even more so because she could see the love there, the affection that he still held for her. It took her breath away, something she'd been working very hard not to show.

Harry was definitely no longer a thin little boy, which was also making her nervous about looking directly at him; she didn't want him to think she was _leering_. She sat beside him and leaned against the pillows, facing straight ahead. He was everything she'd wanted young Harry to be and was not. Especially _not young_. But she'd been telling the truth: it _was_ the young Harry with whom she'd fallen in love. Wouldn't she be _cheating_ on him if anything 'happened' with the older one? Or did it matter, since she couldn't—and shouldn't—be with the younger Harry?

Her mind swam. Out of the corner of her eye she could see his right thigh; his knee was raised and he rested his forearm on it. She could also see the hint of taut muscles under the fabric of his lightweight summer trousers. _Stop it stop it stop it,_ she ordered herself. With a sigh, she closed her eyes. Young or old, she had to admit that she was attracted to Harry Potter. It was no good to pretend otherwise.

But she had to anyway.

She didn't _know_ this Harry, technically. She dared to glance up at his face. He smiled at her and she saw very faint lines at the corners of his eyes. She smiled back at him, thinking how much she liked his smile lines. It was just how she _thought_ he should look at thirty-two, as though he'd spent a lot of time in the sun, and she remembered his mentioning Quidditch in passing, but saying that she couldn't possibly want to hear about a game played in the air on broomsticks.

"Tell me about Quidditch," she said suddenly. He looked surprised.

"Quidditch?"

"Yes, Quidditch. I told you I had wanted to talk to Harry—er, him—some more tonight, and one thing I was curious about was Quidditch. We never got around to discussing it before."

He grinned. "Quidditch. You want to talk about _Quidditch._ "

She crossed her arms and looked at him expectantly, noting that at some time in the previous sixteen years he had finally bought new glasses that were a little more flattering to his face. He finally shrugged and threw up his hands.

"Okay, fine. I'll tell you all about Quidditch—"

"Not just about the game, but the first time you played, or your most memorable matches, all of that."

He nodded. "Fair enough. _Quidditch Through the Ages_ , my version."

When he smiled at her, it felt like her heart was turning over and she had to look away, swallowing.

"Take it from the top," she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	57. Lost and Found

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Fifty-Seven**

 **Lost and Found**

 **#/#/#**

"Ginny, what are you doing here at this hour?" Theo Nott demanded. After pointing his wand at the candles mounted on the panelled wall on either side of the bed, he opened the huge old wardrobe, scanning the clothes for something he could throw on quickly. Earlier, he'd opened a window against the hot summer evening, and through the casement Ginny could see the roofs of the shops in Diagon Alley, Madam Malkin's, Flourish and Blotts, Quality Quidditch Supplies, her brothers' shop, Parvati's…

She thought she might have stayed in this room once with Hermione, perhaps just before her second year, when they'd ridden in Ministry cars to the train because Harry was with them and had to be protected from Sirius. Or so they'd thought. She stepped into the room, closing the door while Theo pulled a tee shirt and jeans from a shelf. "I was just at Parvati's shop with Harry. I—I need a friend to talk to, Theo."

"And you couldn't have gone to Hermione? Or Luna, or one of your brothers? Or anyone else?" he grumbled, digging in a drawer for socks. "Would you mind turning around?" He gestured at the clothes he'd thrown on the enormous four-poster bed, its purple velvet hangings moving in a light breeze from the window.

"Oh! Of course." Her face glowed with embarrassment before she turned to face the door. She stiffened when she heard him taking off his dressing gown, and possibly to avoid thinking about his being in only his boxers, she babbled, "Well, erm, Luna is—well, she's my sister-in-law, and as much as I like her, I don't think she'd understand what I'm going through. Or feel the same way about it. And Hermione, well," Ginny said, snorting. "She usually takes Harry's side. She'd only tell me how important it is for Harry to maintain the timeline, and then I'd get a lecture about time travel. From _her_! After she had that Time-Turner thing all during my second year and never said a word!" Ginny sniffed. "And I never gave away to Harry and Ron—especially Ron—that she was going to the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum…"

There was a crashing silence in response to her rambling. She glanced over her shoulder, seeing Theo sitting on the rumpled bed, tying a pair of battered trainers. She turned around fully and waited for him to say something. He looked up at her finally, saying, "Are you finished?"

"Erm, yes," she said awkwardly, starting to wish she hadn't come.

"Because even though a lot of what you just said is news to me—especially Hermione Granger having a Time-Turner when she was in school—I can't help noticing that you failed to explain the _real_ reason that you're here. Namely that I'm not gay or married, so if you cheat on your husband with me, for revenge, I'm someone who might be interested but you won't be putting a wife in the same position that _you're_ in right now. No one else gets hurt. Apart from Harry, of course, and you're _trying_ to hurt him. But what about _me_? Did considering how I might feel ever cross your mind? Or did you think I'd be thrilled to finally get to be with you, since I've been in love with you for years, something you thought you'd finally take advantage of because it suited _you_ , because it was convenient for _you_?"

Ginny looked at him, aghast; her face immediately crumpled and she held her hands to her mouth, horrified, unable to stop her tears. "Oh, Theo! I'm so sorry! I—I didn't think about your feelings at all."

He nodded miserably, wishing he didn't feel like taking her in his arms, rubbing her back until her tears stopped, kissing each drop away. "No, you didn't," he said, still sitting on the bed.

"And—and I was very selfish. And thoughtless," she added, taking her hands from her face. He wished that she could manage to actually look ugly while crying, but the tears just made her large brown eyes appear larger and shinier, so he had to look away from her. Chastising her was so much easier when he didn't want to kiss her senseless.

"Yes," he agreed. "Yes, you were," he said, staring at the open wardrobe.

Suddenly Ginny laughed, and if he'd thought she was beautiful while crying, that was nothing to when she was laughing. He couldn't help looking at her again. Which was part of why he'd found it impossible to get her out of his heart.

"Well, you know, it _is_ polite to disagree with someone criticising themselves," she informed him, wiping tears from her cheeks. Theo joined in her laughter, feeling like his heart was walking a tightrope.

And there was no net below to catch him if he fell.

#/#/#

It was still dark when Tilda opened her eyes. The only light came from a combination of the street lamps and the nearly-full moon shining whitely through the windows. She wasn't certain when they'd fallen asleep but she must have been first as she didn't recall turning out the light. Harry must have done it. She and Harry had talked for hours, the conversation about Quidditch merging into one about how he'd felt the first time he'd arrived at Hogwarts, about the teachers, the other students, then more details about his fifth year, which he'd only done in brief when he was young, other than his unsuccessful relationship with Cho Chang and giving the interview that appeared in the tabloid.

She was appalled by his full account of Snape's Occlumency lessons and Umbridge's detentions and Educational Decrees. She gasped at the news that he and his friends had ridden the fearsome Thestrals to _London_! After hearing about Umbridge, it was very hard not to rant about her own boss, Old Soberley. (She did rant a little, but refrained from really going off about what she thought of Greater Whinging's primary school and the state of education in Britain in general.)

She had finally stopped avoiding looking at him, absorbing everything about his appearance: his broad, capable hands, which were actually very much like young Harry's hands but with more wear-and-tear; his face, which showed a regular dark stubble near the middle of the night; and the messy black hair that was as unruly as ever and yet looked quite _right_ on him, which it hadn't always on young Harry, who always seemed to have misplaced his comb.

He was fast asleep now, wearing his glasses still. She watched his face in repose, as she had done that morning with the sixteen-year-old version of him. _This_ Harry also seemed more _right_ , somehow, as though the other one was just biding his time until he reached this point in his life. His skin didn't look slightly loose anymore, as though it was a costume that didn't quite fit, or some of Dudley's old clothes that Harry had been forced to wear as a child. His jaw had a nice firmness to it. She had to resist the urge to run her finger along it, up to his ear…

Instead she gently lifted his glasses from his face and set them on the bedside table, turning to look at him again. He'd turned out quite nicely, and she caught her breath, remembering that she'd insisted that she wasn't going to just leap into his arms again, because it was the other Harry with whom she was in love.

 _But was it_?

During their hours of conversation, the differences between _that_ Harry and _this_ one seemed to have faded to nothing, and she knew that she was in a very precarious position, that if he merely touched her or attempted to kiss her she would be lost. Luckily, he seemed to be as sound a sleeper at thirty-two as he was at sixteen. She still didn't understand why the mad owl that had delivered his exam results hadn't woken him.

 _He may be different on the outside, but inside he's the same as ever._

But no—he wasn't completely changed on the outside. On his brow he still bore the mark of his celebrity in the wizarding world: his scar. She started to reach out to trace it with her finger but pulled her shaking hand back. _No. I shouldn't do that. It's sort of—sacred._ And then she noticed the other scar, the other thing that was still the same about him. She remembered the young Harry telling her about the graveyard, about being tied to the tombstone while he was cut, his blood taken to resurrect his enemy.

This time she did not pull back her hand; she gently traced her finger over the still-raised flesh on the inside of his elbow, the remnant of the battle that had ultimately made him a man. She could not help assuming that he was with her this night, sixteen years older, because he had in fact defeated his enemy. _He became a murderer,_ she thought for a moment, trying to see a killer in the gentle face. She could not. _I'm sure he did what was necessary,_ she told herself.

Suddenly, the knowledge that when he eventually left her house he _wouldn't_ be going to his certain death made her feel so happy and relieved at once that she pressed her lips to the scar. He'd tried to keep the future from her, from himself, by using the memory charm, but even if he hadn't told her that Voldemort was gone his very _existence_ was a piece of information about the future that couldn't be denied.

 _Harry was going to be all right_.

She no longer had to wonder and worry. She already knew the outcome of the war, assuming that it wasn't still going on. She didn't know how many people would die, what the cost would be, but she knew that _Harry_ had survived and Voldemort had not. Surely he wouldn't be doing something as frivolous as travelling back in time to see her if he was supposed to be focussing on a _war_.

She traced the scar with her finger again and then ran her fingertip gently along the soft skin of his inner arm. Tears ran down her cheeks and she didn't bother wiping them away. Instead, she bent down again and pressed her lips to the scar once more, so grateful that he was here, so grateful for what it _meant_.

 _He will live, he will live._

"Tilda?"

She looked at him, his eyes still closed. He reached out blindly and put his hand on top of her head, then stroked downward, cupping her cheek in his hand.

" _Do that again,_ " he whispered hoarsely.

She swallowed; her heartbeat seemed to be in her ears, louder than anything else, and she could barely hear him over it. Without a thought, she lowered her lips to his skin again, watching his face. When she made contact with the scar once more he let out a small moan, and she could not deny the effect the sound had on her.

But a moment later she felt a twinge of guilt. _What am I doing?_ she demanded of herself, even as she continued to trace her lips over the scar. She'd just been thinking that if he merely touched her or kissed her she would be lost. _This is dangerous_ , her mind warned her, even as she looked up at his face to see his reaction.

His eyes opened slowly and she caught her breath. That was the other thing about Harry that hadn't changed. His eyes. Even in the combination of moonlight and street lamps they were still utterly arresting. _Good reason to always wear glasses,_ she thought, _to minimise the effect of your eyes on vulnerable women._

He sat up slightly, his eyes boring into hers. She swallowed again, her stomach fluttering, unable to look away. He grasped her shoulders, lightly but firmly, and pulled her up so that her face was over his, her hair a curtain around them. She let herself be moved, as unable to govern her own body as a doll or a puppet. Or as unwilling, she wasn't sure which. Sliding his hands up her shoulders to her neck, he brushed his fingers along the sensitive skin at her nape, then gently, slowly, pulled her face down to his.

She gasped into his mouth as their lips touched. He pulled her fully against him, their chests crushed together, one of his hands laced into her hair, the other running down her back, pressing her to him, holding her tightly, as though he was afraid she would disappear if he didn't. She shuddered and surrendered, her hands on either side of his face, her tears ceasing with the first contact her lips made with his. She had no reason to cry now.

She was lost.

#/#/#

It was close to dawn when Tilda opened her eyes slowly, feeling disoriented. Her head was on Harry's chest and his arm was around her shoulder. Neither of them had bothered to dress. They'd already been asleep before she'd started kissing the scar on his arm, and exhaustion had overcome them again as they'd held each other closely after—

 _Bloody hell,_ she thought, looking down at their bodies. _What now_? She thought of young Harry in the lounge, who, according to his older self, had spent a perfectly miserable and frustrated night alone on the couch, while here she was, wrapped around his thirty-two-year-old counterpart, a feeling of completion and content filling her.

Guilt suddenly overwhelmed her, and she remembered that she had at one point thought of this as _cheating_. But had she cheated on Harry? And _could_ she cheat on him with anyone (let alone his older self) when she shouldn't even have _considered_ being with a sixteen-year-old in the first place?

Her head ached. She needed to get out of the bed, to stop _touching_ him. She ran to the wardrobe, finding her blue dressing gown. After looking at the sleeping man in her bed for a moment that made her feel that her heart had stopped, she slipped quietly out of the bedroom and into the bathroom.

After she flushed the toilet and washed her hands, she sat on the edge of the tub, rocking back and forth, wringing her still-damp hands, wondering what on earth she was going to do now. She'd told young Harry that they were going to Brighton today. How would she do that now? She went to the sink, splashing cold water on her face, then staring at the water swirling downward. _There are too many Harrys for me to deal with right now,_ she thought. _And the real problem is—I think I'm in love with both of them._

She straightened and looked at herself in the mirror. _Am I glowing? Please, don't glow, don't glow…_

That thought, however, _did_ make her redden as she recalled what they'd done. He seemed to _know_ things, presumably more than his sixteen-year-old-self, and more than some other men she'd known, but less than a couple of them as well. She laughed for a moment. Of _course_ he 'knew' things, even if a spell had buried the specific memories. His _body_ obviously remembered. The idea that he might have waited this long to have sex for the first time was ridiculous. _Or was it? Was that why—?_ No, he'd obviously been with _someone_ else. Or _someones_ , plural. How stupid to be surprised.

Then she wondered who the other women _were_ , and one possibility suddenly reared up in her head, making her bolt from the bathroom and return to the bedroom. The slamming door didn't even make him stir in his sleep. She stalked to the bed and made a great point of bouncing as she sat, but he still didn't wake. She decided to find out what she wanted to know herself. His left arm was lying along his side and she reached over and pulled it across his body, peering intently at the third finger.

There was a very tiny pale line of skin about an inch below the second knuckle. It was only the width of a coin at most, and there were slight indentations at the top and bottom edge of the pale line. She knew what that meant, she'd seen it too many times in clubs not to know. She looked at his face. He continued to sleep peacefully, snoring softly, so she pressed her fingernails into the top of his hand and waited for the pain to wake him.

"Ow!" he cried, pulling his hand away quickly, his eyes flying open in shock. She sat back and glared at him.

"Would you care to tell me the meaning of _that_?" she said, pointing at his hand. He frowned at her, then held up his hand.

"The meaning of _what_? It's my hand. If I recall correctly, not too long ago you were rather pleased with it—"

"Shut up!" she said, smacking the hand, making him pull it back. "And put something on!" she snapped, irritated by the fact that even while she was cross with him his exposed body was making hers respond mutinously. She pulled the neck of her dressing gown together with her hands, wishing that she had put on more.

"What's wrong?" he demanded, not moving to dress yet. "What did I do?" he added, his voice going up into a whine, reminding her _very_ forcibly of his younger self.

"What's wrong? _What's wrong_?" She grabbed his wrist again and attempted to shove his fingers directly in front of his eyes. " _That's_ what's wrong, you _cheater_ , you!" She remembered the way she'd felt when she was twenty, when she first discovered that a married man will say just about anything to get a young woman into bed.

"Wha—? I don't understand," he said, staring at his hand, clearly perplexed. She sighed and grabbed his fingers, pointing at the tiny white line on the third one.

" _Here_! There's clearly a mark that indicates that you _usually_ wear a wedding ring. Which you _conveniently_ did not wear to come on this little trip. How _could_ you?" she demanded, her own voice verging on a whine that she strongly disliked.

He stared down at his hand, shaking his head. "I'm—I'm sorry, Tilda. I honestly—if I'm still married, I—I don't remember anything about it, or who it is. All I remember is Parvati telling me that I needed to make sure I wasn't seen by anyone other than you and that I couldn't tell you about the future. Some things are obvious, of course, such as my still being alive and all, but—"

"So," she said, standing and pacing, "the purpose of the memory charm was to make you forget you were cheating on your wife?"

He shook his head. "I told you, Tilda, I don't even know _why_ I came back, except that I learned at some point that I _had_ already done this, so I needed to do it to preserve the timeline."

"Well, I think I _do_ know why you came back," she growled at him, pacing the floor by the foot of the bed, refusing to look at him. "I think it was for shagging—"

"No!" he cried, springing out of the bed and going to her.

He still wasn't wearing anything, and as he held her shoulders she stared ahead at his chest, thinking, _Chest hair. Harry has chest hair._ She'd seen it while they were making love, but she hadn't really thought about it. She squeezed her eyes shut, hating herself for being distracted by something as stupid as _chest hair._

"I was perfectly willing to just _see_ you again and talk to you. Listen, do you want to know why I _think_ I came here?"

She dared open her eyes again and looked up at his pleading face. "Why?" she whispered.

He looked very grim. "Well, I probably shouldn't be telling you this, because it's still in the future for you, but it's the very _near_ future, so…"

"Get to it!" she snapped, pulling away and turning her back to him, clenching and unclenching her fists, trying to maintain her composure.

"When we get back from Brighton tonight—"

She whirled. " _We_?"

"Yeah. You took me to Brighton on my birthday. Our birthday. Well, you said you would and you did."

"But you said _we_ ," she reminded him.

"Yeah, about that… Like I said, everything about this time of my life is really clear in my head right now, the memories are very strong. And now that I think about it, there are some rather queer things that happened when we went to Brighton that can only be explained by my having gone with the two of you."

"Gone with? I thought you weren't supposed to be seen by anyone but me?"

He shrugged. "Invisibility Cloak," he said simply. She nodded, having forgotten that.

"Yes. Right," she said, as though she _hadn't_ forgotten. "Well, what about tonight?"

He looked reluctant to speak again. "Something is going to happen when we get back. And I think I'm needed for that. I can't say anything more. I _shouldn't_ say anything more. Just trust me. I think I need to be here for something very important."

She tried to continue to glare at him, but she was rather forcing it now, so it was difficult to maintain. She collapsed on the bed, her head in her hands, unsure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. "I'm sorry, Harry. You understand how I could think—"

"Yeah, I do," he said softly. She felt the mattress shift as he climbed on the bed behind her; a moment later his hand was pressed to her back, rubbing in gentle circles, and when he started loosening the belt of her dressing gown and removing it from her shoulders, she leaned back against him, sighing, feeling lost again and yet also wonderfully found.

#/#/#

Harry opened his eyes. Tilda was asleep again, curled on her side with her cheek pillowed on her hand. He smiled and brushed the hair from her face, tracing the outline of her cheek with his finger. To him it felt like it was just yesterday that he'd spent the frustrated, lonely night in her lounge after being rejected by her. Now they'd made love twice, and he didn't know how it could be possible to feel happier or more content.

He pulled back his hand, staring at the pale line on the third finger, trying to remember, closing his eyes and thinking as hard as he could.

 _Do you take…to have and to hold…to love and to cherish…_

As much as he tried it kept slipping away from him. _Am I married? And if so, why am I here?_ He wondered for a panicked moment whether he was _changing_ the timelines by sleeping with Tilda. If he had come into the past to do something that evening, during the confrontation with Voldemort and the Death Eaters, should he also be with Tilda? And yet—Parvati had told him that _Tilda_ was the only person in this time he could talk to. And the memory charm would guard against his being able to give away too much about the future. _But what if I've altered the future by making myself forget some very important details of my life, such as having a wife_?

His head spun as he considered this. He wasn't fully awake yet. It was too early to be considering the philosophical problems of time travel. Glancing at Tilda's clock, he saw that it was exactly seven o'clock. Even without looking he would have known that, as his body was telling him that it was time for his morning visit to the loo. He ran his hand down his face and yawned before hunting for where Tilda had put his glasses. After pulling on his boxers, he padded to the bedroom door, yawning again, but he'd no sooner opened the door than he was confronted in mid-yawn by his sixteen-year-old self, also about to enter the bathroom.

The two of them stood frozen for a moment, staring at each other, before the younger Harry pulled out his wand and cried, " _Stupe—_!"

" _No!_ " he cried, leaping forward and covering young Harry's mouth with his hand and physically wresting the wand from his grip with the other hand. Being a little taller and stronger helped, but he worried about what unpredictable things his younger self might do, being confronted with a thirty-two-year-old Harry. Suddenly he felt no confidence at all that he wasn't changing time. His younger self could do _anything_ , not necessarily what Harry remembered, and for some reason he didn't remember confronting his older self at all, so now he probably _was_ changing time, which could result in complete chaos. What he did remember was Hermione telling him in third year that some wizards who'd used Time-Turners had killed themselves by crossing paths on the same timeline.

 _This can't be good_.

When Harry made contact with himself for the first time, it was painful, which he hadn't expected; a spark leapt between them. Perhaps it was because they were one person, and they weren't supposed to be in the same time, let alone touch. Young Harry's eyes were wild behind his glasses. It was clear that he was taking in the appearance of the man restraining him, the scar on his brow, the green eyes and messy hair.

"It's—it's me," Harry said to him. "I mean—you. Your future self. I travelled back in time, but I didn't mean for you to see me. Please—promise you won't do anything rash if I release you and let you speak—" His younger self nodded and Harry felt the tension leave the boy's body as he ceased to fight against his older incarnation.

They stood staring at each other as though they had access to a mirror that could see across the years. Young Harry looked as though he'd just woken up, blinking sleepily still. He continued to examine the older man with a wary, hunted expression on his face, as though not trusting that this was himself.

"If you're me, then—then what did I see the first time I looked in the Mirror of Erised?"

Harry looked at his younger self, wondering whether he had thought for a moment that he was again seeing his—their—father. "Mum and Dad," he whispered. "And other relatives."

But the teenager wasn't satisfied yet. He evidently decided that questions should be fired thick and fast now:

"When did I first notice Cho Chang? What was the happy thought that let me conjure a Patronus down by the lake in my third year? Who did I talk to at the pub in New Stokington? What did I eat? What did we have for pudding at my aunt's house that night?"

"Third year, just before playing Ravenclaw at Quidditch, which Gryffindor won even though I was trying to be nice to her. Oliver ordered me knock her off her broom if I had to. I realised that I'd already conjured the Patronus, so I knew I could do it. I reckon that was the happy thought. I talked to Gary, a footballer who'd just won a football match and a couple of hundred quid. I had some crisps and a Coke, but they weren't very good so Gary bought me some bacon sarnies. We had trifle, but I think Dudley ate most of it, including Aunt Marge's…"

His younger self stared, open-mouthed, during this recital. Harry spoke very fast, so it would be clear that it was unrehearsed. He was glad that he threw in the part about the bacon sarnies and Dudley eating most of the trifle, as he didn't think those were the sort of things he'd tell anyone about. No one else would have a way of knowing.

They continued to stare at each other, but then the younger Harry's mind leapt forward much more quickly than Tilda's had. "So—in your time, Voldemort's gone? Or are you still trying to get rid of him?"

Harry clamped his mouth shut, then sighed. "I was afraid you'd work that part out. Damn. Listen, about the future—"

Young Harry snorted. "Well, you _do_ realise that just by existing you're rather giving a lot away, don't you? Then it's already happened for you? How do I do it?" he asked with a shaking voice.

"Do what?"

"Kill Voldemort."

Harry raised one eyebrow, crossing his arms. "You honestly expect me to tell you that?"

The boy shrugged. "Why not? It's information from me to me."

"But it's still in the future for you! I'm not supposed to— And anyway, you seem to have forgotten that Dumbledore told you not to do magic. What were you thinking, trying to stun me?"

"What was _I_ thinking? You should know!" he spat out, irritated.

He shook his head. "I've got a memory charm on me so that—" His voice shook and he felt like an icy finger had touched him. _Am I changing the timeline?_ he wondered again. _Oh, God._ "No, don't tell me—" he said quickly, trying to pre-empt young Harry from answering. What _would_ he have thought? "You were thinking that I must be a Death Eater—"

"Yeah," his younger self said, looking suspiciously at the older man. "And I thought you just said you had a memory charm on you. Which means—I thought time couldn't be changed?" he said suddenly in confusion.

Harry-the-man shook his head. "Not easily, no. All I know is that I did travel back in time to this day, and that if I _didn't_ do this, _then_ the timeline _would_ be changed. I really am _supposed_ to be here."

"But are you supposed to be doing _this_? And how old are you, anyway?"

"I—I don't think I should tell you that. Otherwise you'll know when—" He stopped suddenly, remembering something else. "But then, if you don't remember…"

Harry wracked his brain. Although specific events in his life after turning sixteen were inaccessible, things he had learned were not. Somehow he remembered a spell he'd learnt at the Ministry—had he completed Auror training? He remembered very clearly the morning he received his exam results at Tilda's house. He could apply now, he'd received an Outstanding in Potions on his O.W.L.s.

"You're going to Obliviate me?" young Harry said immediately.

 _Can't put anything past you,_ his older self thought, not wanting to be quite so sarcastic out-loud. He sighed. "I really think I should. You know how it is."

The boy nodded. "Well, if you're going to memory-charm me anyway, can I ask you something first?"

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	58. A Plethora of Harrys

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Fifty-Eight**

 **A Plethora of Harrys**

 **#/#/#**

"Do I get to be an Auror?" young Harry asked.

Harry sighed. "Well, the spell I need to perform first is one I don't think I learned in school. That's all I can say."

A grin spread across his face. "That's brilliant! But—what spell?"

Harry took a deep breath. "It's a tricky little shield charm, undetectable, a bit of wandless magic. It's to place a barrier around a small area, so that spells can be performed within that area without being detected by anyone looking for magic. Which won't be _just_ the Ministry, you realise. That's why Dumbledore didn't want you doing magic."

The boy nodded. "That makes sense." He looked at his older self very thoroughly now, up and down, then dwelling on the left hand, as Tilda had done. "But—but can I ask you something else?"

The young eyes were clearly taking in his _clothes_ now, or the lack thereof, since Harry was still in just his boxers. "Earlier—was I hearing—I thought I was hearing you and Tilda—I mean—" He swallowed, looking even younger than his sixteen years now, and very hurt.

Harry couldn't take it anymore. He closed his eyes and stepped closer to the teenager, moving his hands in circles over young Harry's head and his own. " _Aegis_!" he cried, feeling the power emanating from his fingertips. When he opened his eyes, there was a bluish column of light surrounding them both.

"I'm sorry, Harry," he said, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder, shuddering at the inevitable spark. "I'm going to put the memory charm on you, and then a stunner. I'm sorry," he said once more, "but you'll be meeting the future soon enough."

Young Harry started to open his mouth in protest, but very quickly Harry pointed his wand and cried, " _Obliviate!_ " The boy's knees started to give way, but Harry grabbed his younger self under the arms, wincing at the electrical charges shooting through them both at every point of contact, before awkwardly pointed the wand at the thin chest and cried, " _Stupefy!_ "

Young Harry was quite stiff now and senseless to what was going on around him. Harry looked at his younger self, sighing for a moment, before calling out, " _Tilda_!" She swung open the bedroom door, her eyes wide in shock when she saw him supporting the weight of the younger, stunned Harry.

"Get my Invisibility Cloak!" he said, grunting in pain as charges continued to bounce back and forth between their bodies. Something in the universe simply did _not_ like the two of them having physical contact and he wanted to end it as soon as possible. She quickly returned with the Cloak. "Hurry!" he urged her. "The shield charm will collapse in a minute!"

When he was concealed again, he pointed the wand at young Harry through the Cloak. " _Enervate!_ " Immediately afterward the magical shield evaporated and Harry quickly stepped past Tilda and his younger self, dashing for the bedroom. Tilda could no longer support the boy's weight; the rejuvenation spell caused young Harry's body to lose its rigor-mortis-like stiffness. He collapsed on the floor, wincing as his tailbone struck it rather hard. The older Harry winced in sympathy, hidden under his Cloak.

Young Harry looked around in confusion. "What—what's going on?"

Tilda started to kneel over him, still wearing only the blue dressing gown, which had clearly not escaped the teenager's attention. She stood hastily, holding the neck together with her hands. "I—I don't know. I heard a thud and I came running out here. What do you remember?" she asked with a shaking voice.

He stood slowly, rubbing his bum with a pained expression when he was upright again. "Not much. I woke up, needed to use the loo—"

"Why didn't you use the one downstairs? Jack fixed it, remember?"

His face looked utterly blank and, his older self thought, rather stupid. "Oh. Right. Forgot. I'm so used to coming up here. But I don't even remember coming up the stairs, and the next thing I'm lying on the floor here with my bum aching—"

She forced a nervous laugh. "Oh, you're just sleepy still. Go on, use the upstairs loo as long as you're here already. I can wait. And then we'll work out what we want to pack for Brighton."

He seemed to forget about everything else when she said 'Brighton.' "You mean it? We're still going?"

"Of course we are. Why not? It's our birthday. We should celebrate."

From the look on young Harry's face, it was clear that he would have liked to celebrate by doing something else. With her. But instead he slouched toward the bathroom.

"Yeah. Celebrate," he said dully before closing the door.

Tilda collapsed against the wall with a sigh of relief before wearily pushing away from the wall and shuffling toward the bedroom, sighing again after she closed the door and leaned on it. When Harry removed his Cloak again, she started to cry out in surprise but quickly bit her tongue.

"Stop _doing_ that!" she hissed crossly. "And I'm still not sure about this."

"About what?" he whispered as he pulled his clothes on.

"About all of it! About going to Brighton at all, let alone smuggling you along in your Cloak."

"Well, I'll go down first and get into the back seat. I'll lie on the floor when you're ready to put things in the car. He'll never know I'm there, I promise you. It'll be fine." He sat to put on his shoes and tie them.

She frowned. "Are you sure you don't just want to wait here?"

He shook his head. "I'm fairly certain that I don't do that. So, since I've—"

"—already done it this way," she continued for him.

He nodded. "Right. I know you're tired of hearing that—"

"Damn right I am," she said, still cross. "Plus, it—it just sounds _weird._ "

He laughed, impishly leaning down to kiss her on the nose before covering up again with the Cloak.

"I'm off to the garage. See you later."

"Hopefully not, since I'll be with Young You."

"Figure of speech."

"I know!" she whispered in his general direction. "Just go before he gets out."

He left the room without another word, creeping as soundlessly as he could down the stairs and finally entering the garage, then settling down to wait invisibly in the back seat of Tilda's car.

#/#/#

Harry felt like he was waiting forever for the two of them to come to the garage. It was rather uncomfortable lying on the floor of the car's back seat and he wondered how he'd tolerate the drive to Brighton. _That would explain the noise in the back seat while we drove to the seaside,_ he thought, remembering that he'd spent a lot of time looking backward because Tilda had. He'd assumed that she was doing this because she thought someone might be following them. He thought for a moment of trying to find a way to warn her not to do this, but he feared that that would be changing time, so he put it out of his mind. If everything went as it did the first time, young Harry would look back but not suspect anything.

At long last Tilda and young Harry appeared in the garage. When he saw his young self with the sunglasses, stubble and blond hair he almost cried out in shock. He'd utterly forgotten about his change in appearance. Then he realised that he might not have to spend the entire trip in the car after all. He might even be able to walk around Brighton without his Cloak if he disguised himself well enough. Both Animagus and Metamorphmagus magic were undetectable, so there was no danger of anyone—from the Ministry or otherwise—picking up on magic use in the area if he didn't use his wand. Now that they were in the garage, he slid onto the floor from the seat where he'd been waiting.

Tilda opened the back door on the driver's side to put more things in the car. "Are you all right?" she whispered when she felt the silky Cloak under her hand.

"Fine. Stop talking to me, though."

She nodded and closed the car before going to the garage door that let out onto the drive. When young Harry appeared, she told him, "Just get into the front seat and put your Cloak on. I don't want to open the door until you're hidden."

Harry heard the front passenger door open and close as the boy got into the car and threw his bag into the back seat on top of a load of other things that Tilda had already heaped on top of Harry in his Cloak. The impact of the bag landing startled Harry, making him flinch, which in turn made some of the other things on top of him shift slightly. He looked up and saw young Harry peering at the back seat. He froze, waiting for the teenager to turn away. Young Harry finally faced front again, covering himself in his Cloak. Harry breathed a mental sigh of relief.

While she opened the garage door, backed the car out, closed it again, and returned to the car, Harry's heart was thudding so loudly in his chest he thought he would surely end up changing time, for his younger self could not fail to hear the beating. However, the boy seemed oblivious to not being the only Harry Potter in Tilda Harrison's car.

"Next stop, Brighton!"

#/#/#

Harry tried not to think about the picnic hamper sitting on his back as the car moved down the motorway to Brighton. Just as he remembered from when he was young, Tilda glanced behind her quite a lot. He thought of something else now in regard to that: she could have given his presence away! His annoyance with her was softened by the fact that he knew it hadn't happened, but at the time she didn't _know_ that it wouldn't happen.

"Worried that we're being followed?" young Harry finally said, making Tilda—and his older self—jump.

"Harry! I forgot you were here," she said shakily.

"Sorry to startle you." Harry waited for his younger self to speak again but there was an extended pause. "Tilda," he finally said softly. She didn't seem surprised this time.

"Yes?" she answered.

"This morning, when I was out. How long was it?"

"Out? Oh, um, I don't know."

"I was wondering—did I do anything, or say anything, before I—"

"I don't understand, Harry."

Harry wished with all his heart that he could throw off the Cloak and tell himself that it was all right, it was just _him_ , that Voldemort hadn't possessed him or Tilda. But he couldn't. That was why he'd put the memory charm on the boy. He couldn't do a thing to reassure the boy he couldn't see under the other Invisibility Cloak.

"Did I—did I touch you?" he whispered. Harry glanced up between the front seats.

Tilda turned in young Harry's direction abruptly before quickly looking at the road again. "What do you mean?" She was barely audible.

Harry closed his eyes, listening to the two of them. He hadn't counted on how painful it would be to relive all of this. Listening to his younger self, the cracking voice, the doubts and fears, the uncertainty… He hadn't been expecting this at all. One of the hardest things he'd ever had to do was to let his younger self simply suffer, not knowing. He'd never anticipated feeling pity for _himself_ , and it was breaking his heart.

He listened to the boy tell her about Ginny being possessed, about the roosters and the basilisk. During young Harry's narrative his mind wandered and he found himself fixating on the name _Ginny_.

 _GinnyGinnyGinny_ …

Why did _Ginny_ stick in his mind so? He tried to remember what she was like during his fifth and sixth years, but the memory charm that Parvati had used was magnifying this day, his sixteenth birthday, to a crystalline clarity, with the side-effect of making the rest of his life recede into a fuzzy backdrop. The best he could do was picture her in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place, curled in a chair by the fire on the night they were waiting for word of Mr Weasley. For some reason he remembered that the fire was reflected in her eyes. But that was all.

"Well, I don't see how I could possibly take you there, Harry. If you can't tell me the name of the place or where it is."

Harry jerked his head up. He'd let his mind wander during their conversation. He'd been trying to remember things about—who was it again? He felt like the name was on the tip of his tongue and yet also slipping away from him like mist.

Young Harry sighed noisily under his Cloak. "No, I reckon I can't. But I have made a decision. I'm going to turn myself in tonight. Next door, at Mrs Figg's. It's better than turning myself in at the Ministry. I _might_ be able to find the entrance to that, but I'd rather not. There they'd probably let me into the entrance hall—which is ruined, because of me—and then break my wand as soon as look at me," he said in a voice dripping misery. "At least there might be some members of the Order at Mrs Figg's."

Tilda looked in his direction for a long moment, then back at the road. "You think—"

"I think," he interrupted her, "it would be a very bad idea for me to spend another night in your house," he said quietly. Harry fought the urge to sigh. He remembered the frustration, the futility. It was like he'd been punched in the gut. _Last night I slept with Tilda. I betrayed my younger self, if that's possible. But is it, really? Or is there another reason I feel—guilty?_ But trying to identify what he was feeling was no help. Once more he had a nagging sensation at the back of his mind. He was certain that there was something very, very important that he was forgetting, many, many important things. But he was supposed to. That was the _point_.

Tilda nodded. "You're probably right," she said, sounding like she was having trouble choking out the words. Or like she was remembering what she'd done with _him_ , with thirty-two-year-old Harry. "You're probably right," she whispered again. Was she feeling guilty, too? It wasn't a good feeling. His insides were tied in knots and he didn't think that was just because he had folded himself up and was wedged into the back seat of the car with the beach gear.

 _Now if I could only be certain that I don't need to know whatever it is I've forgotten before it's time to confront Voldemort._

#/#/#

Harry was enormously relieved when they pulled up in back of Marvin and Brian's café so his younger self could remove the Invisibility Cloak. After they went round to the front of the café, he pushed some of the beach gear aside and scrabbled for the handle to let himself out of the car. This turned out to be a mistake, as it was a sweltering hot day. It was also hot in the car, but it was at least shady. He felt like his lungs had had air pumped into them directly from an oven.

He glanced at the rear façades of the other shops and restaurants, but no one was about. After closing his eyes and concentrating very hard on the transformation he removed the Cloak and stuffed it into the rucksack he was carrying, which also contained his wand. He inspected his appearance in the driver-side mirror, admiring the bright red hair curling over his head—hiding the scar on his brow—and a huge bushy beard and moustache. _I look like a ruddy Viking,_ he thought. _A Weasley Viking._

However, he was satisfied that he at least didn't look like a _Malfoy._ His dark trousers and too-formal shirt weren't appropriate beach attire, but he didn't dare use a spell to Transfigure his clothes. He had to settle for the wandless Metamorphmagus magic. Anything else would be risky and possibly draw attention to both his and young Harry's presence in Brighton.

His stomach moved within him and he inhaled the aromas emanating from the rear of the cafe with something like ecstasy. _Food_. Somehow being crouched in the back of the car for the entire trip had made him absolutely ravenous. He put his hand in his pocket and felt for his wallet, which was usually filled with Muggle money, something of which he was very glad now. At least he wouldn't starve.

He entered the cafe cautiously. He could see Tilda, Harry, Brian and Marvin sitting at a table in the rear. Nodding at a waiter, he said, "I'm meeting a friend. I see him back there."

The waiter was distracted and obviously far too busy. He waved in the general direction in which Harry had gestured. "Go on, then," he said dismissively as he dashed past with an armful of plates. Harry strode across the room to a young man sitting alone at a table near Tilda and the others.

He glanced at the four of them briefly over his shoulder, then leaned over and whispered to the young man, " _Could I please sit here to eat my lunch if I pay for yours_?" The man had large blue eyes and very straight brown hair that flopped over his brow when he nodded vigorously, his mouth full of food. He pressed his napkin to his mouth, staring at Harry, who couldn't work out why he was getting this response. "Thanks," Harry said in reply to the man's nodding at him, his mouth still full.

He dared to look over his shoulder again, met Tilda's glance for a moment and saw her eyes flare with recognition. She shook her head at him, the most minute of gestures, before focussing on her friends again. Harry could see that she was watching him out of the corner of her eye, though. _I didn't tell her I'd be getting out of the car,_ he realised.

"Well?" the waiter asked. Harry felt a finger poke his arm. The young man sitting with him pulled his hand back, turning red.

"He wants to know what you're having," the young man said apologetically.

Harry looked up at the waiter, his mind blank. "I'll—I'll have whatever he's having," he said, pointing to his lunch companion. "Thanks."

"Don't get on well with your dad, yeah?" Marvin asked young Harry.

"Is it that obvious?" he heard his young self say. Harry tilted his head slightly and a trick of the light allowed him to see Tilda and the teenaged Harry reflected in his glasses, at the edge of the right-hand lens.

Brian snorted. "He can't be any worse than my dad. When I came out—"

" _Brian_ ," Tilda said pointedly, gesturing to Harry with her head.

"What?" Brian protested. "He's obviously not—" There were a few moments of silence and Harry could see Brian's hands reach out from just beyond his range of vision to frame Tilda's face in his hands. "Oh! I know what it is about you, Mattie-girl! I should have seen it before. You've been properly shagged, you have!"

"NO!" Harry and Tilda cried together, her voice much louder than his.

" _No shagging_!" Tilda said more quietly, in a desperate whisper, glancing at young Harry out of the corner of her eye. And then Harry saw her eyes move toward _him_ , the Harry she actually _had_ shagged. He swallowed and realised that the young man sitting opposite him was looking at him very strangely. He smiled feebly.

"Sorry. Don't mean to be rude. I just—" Harry thought frantically for a moment, then leaned forward, speaking in a confidential whisper. "I'm a detective. Private, that is. I really appreciate your letting me sit here. I—I'm gathering information."

The young man looked very excited about this. More so than Harry would have liked. " _That's brilliant_!" he said in a shaky whisper. "Who are you investigating? Who hired you? Oh, I'm Harry, by the way," he added, extending his hand across the table.

Harry had been about to speak but stopped dead at that. "You're joking," was all he could think to say. The hand was still waiting so he put his out as well and shook it hastily. The other Harry looked rather puzzled about why Harry should say, "You're joking." Harry shook himself and went on. "At any rate—I can't really talk about it _here_ , can I?" he said quietly. "If you could just—just allow me to listen very carefully, I would _really_ appreciate it." He gave the other Harry a small smile, hoping this would be enough of an apology.

It seemed to be adequate. The other Harry gave him a conspiratorial nod and resumed eating his lunch. "Got it," he said softly before putting a forkful of food in his mouth, followed by a wink that looked extraordinarily unnatural on the pale, bookish young man. After chewing and swallowing, however, he leaned toward Harry, who'd gone back to looking at the reflection of Tilda and young Harry in his lens. The young man hissed at him, " _So what should I call you_?"

Harry started to sigh in exasperation but caught himself in time. It turned into a cough, forcing him to pound his own chest vigorously and lose the train of conversation at Tilda's table. "Erm," he said, seeing his abundant red hair out of the corner of his eye. "Ron. Call me Ron."

"Here we are!" said the waiter suddenly. He seemed to have Apparated beside 'Harry' and 'Ron.'

Harry looked down at the unfamiliar food on his plate and then up at the waiter, trying to seem grateful and enthusiastic. "Thanks. Thanks. Looks great."

From Tilda's table he heard Brian say, "So you're _babysitting_?"

"NO!" Tilda and young Harry cried together.

A number of people in the vicinity of the table turned and stared at the four of them, making Harry groan inwardly. Young Harry looked around and Harry remembered that feeling of deep embarrassment and the need to see just how bad it was, how many people were looking at them and wondering what was going on. Before he could meet the boy's eye, Harry turned back to the _other_ Harry and smiled feebly. He looked down at his strange food, put some on a fork and shoved it into his mouth. He immediately felt like his tongue was on fire and started casting about for a solution to his problem. In short order he held his napkin to his mouth, tried as discreetly as he could to eject the bit of food into the cloth, then reached for the nearest glass for something to drink. Unfortunately, it was his companion's glass. He was looking at Harry quite indignantly now.

"Listen, Ron," he said in an injured tone, "I don't care who you're eavesdropping on, but I didn't know I was signing on to watch someone spew up their food. And that's _my_ drink—"

Harry fought the urge to spit the drink into his napkin next, as it was the second most vile flavour he'd ever put in his mouth, after the food he'd just spit out. He swallowed with some effort and smiled feebly at the other Harry. "Please please _please_ keep your voice down," he said quietly through gritted teeth. "I will not only pay for your lunch but I will give you another ten—no, make that _twenty quid_ —if you will please just _shut up_ now. All right?" He was barely moving his mouth. The young man seemed to be vacillating on whether to continue to co-operate. To help him make up his mind Harry took out his wallet and slapped some money on the table. "Okay, _forty_. Are you happy now?" he whispered fiercely, watching Tilda and young Harry in his lens again.

The other Harry picked up the notes, which sat on the table face down, and looked at Harry as though he was mad. "What are you trying to pull? Adam Smith? On the twenty pound note? I'm an economist, and I think I would have heard about Adam Smith being on any of the currency. What's the matter, didn't have any Monopoly money handy? Did you make this up yourself on your computer printer?"

 _Bloody hell,_ Harry thought. He'd completely forgotten that the Muggle government was regularly changing the currency, retiring old notes and introducing new ones. He recalled that a couple of years before his thirty-second birthday, the twenty-pound note had been introduced that he'd put on the table. The one in use _this_ year did not, evidently, have Adam Smith on it, though Harry couldn't recall who _should_ be on it.

"Good God, man!" the other Harry shouted, snorting as he examined the twenty pound notes more closely. "You're the worst counterfeiter I ever saw! Not that I've seen others. But you've put dates on these things that aren't for another _fourteen years_!"

He looked at the other money in his wallet, but the ten pound notes were dated with the year 2000 and fivers with the year 2002. They wouldn't be legal tender for four and six more years. They also, no doubt, had the wrong images on the backs. That meant that he had no money, none at all. Not a fiver, not a pound coin, not a penny in his pocket, nothing. He didn't even have Galleons, Sickles or Knuts.

Harry swallowed, seeing out of the corner of his eye that Marvin and Brian were making their way toward him. He also saw young Harry looking in his direction with interest. He quickly turned away so that his younger self would only be able to see the unruly red hair. _I remember now_ , he thought. _I remember the disturbance at the cafe now, the red-haired man..._

And he remembered what was going to happen next, as well. He thought about fighting it, but he knew that he shouldn't. If he did he'd be creating a new timeline, and there was no telling what could happen if he did that. _Somehow I'll get out of this,_ he thought. _Somehow I already did._ He tried to feel confident about this, but it was difficult. Every moment he spent in this time he doubted himself. How would he know, from moment to moment, what was preserving and what was changing the timeline?

There simply _was_ no way to know. Harry swallowed again as a very tough-looking young woman wearing a constable's uniform strode over to his table. Though she should have been sweating bullets in the heat, she appeared utterly cool and collected, raising one eyebrow at Harry.

"Is there a problem here?" She didn't sound at all tough, as Harry had expected, but rather like a concerned mother.

Marvin and Brian were standing on either side of him, he was alarmed to find. Each had put a hand around one of his upper arms, so he'd have to shake them off to escape. Which he wasn't going to do, but he understood that that was what they were trying to prevent. As he was escorted from the cafe by the constable he remembered how this had appeared from the other end, how he had sat beside Tilda watching a tall man with messy red hair being dragged off for not being able to pay for his food, since the other young man stated very loudly that they didn't know each other and he wasn't going to pay for anything he didn't eat.

Harry wasn't handcuffed. He said he would come quietly and he did, but as they neared the police car he suddenly remembered the various things he had in his rucksack, things he didn't want the Muggle police to see: his wand and Invisibility Cloak.

Looking over his shoulder at the door of the cafe, he suddenly stopped and roughly pulled his arm from the constable's grasp, sprinting for the pleasure pier as fast as he could. He'd thought for a moment of apologising first, but that would tip her off that something was about to happen. As it was, she recovered rather quickly. Harry heard her footsteps pounding after him, keeping pace.

" _Stop that man!_ "

#/#/#

Parvati had started to go into the shop to talk to Ginny, to try to offer some sort of comfort to her, but Harry had put his hand on her arm to stop her.

"She's gone. She Disapparated."

Parvati frowned. He had the idea that she found his white hair rather disconcerting, in addition to finding the entire situation disconcerting. "Where did she—?"

"Probably back home." He put on his Invisibility Cloak and raised his wand. "I'll just pop over there. Won't take but a minute. I'll be right back to let you know she's all right, yeah?"

Parvati didn't have a chance to respond before he disappeared silently. Once his eyes slid into focus again he saw his home standing before him, surrounded by the old overgrown graveyard as usual. He started to walk forward, still under the Invisibility Cloak, but then decided that if he changed his appearance he could come and go with impunity. No one would be shocked to see an apparently thirty-two-year-old Harry Potter entering his own house.

He took off the Cloak and closed his eyes, concentrating. When he felt the change take place he waved his wand, changing it into a small hand-mirror. He was able to judge his success by the light of the moon and saw that he had adequately darkened his hair again as well as returning it to roughly the same length it had been on his thirty-second birthday. He also managed to reduce the appearance of the lines around his eyes somewhat, something he usually neither minimized nor maximized. His naturally-occurring small wrinkles, along with the white hair, served him well in his daily duties as Minister. He didn't need to appear as if he were on the brink of death or as if he had been alive for a millennium. Just the white hair was surprisingly effective when it came to convincing people to take him seriously as the Minister for Magic.

Being Harry Potter didn't hurt, either.

He waved the mirror, changing it into a wand again, and set about Transfiguring his clothing so that he was wearing the same sort of shirt and trousers he'd worn to go to Parvati's shop with Ginny. Conjuring up a bag in which to carry the Invisibility Cloak, he put the Cloak and his wand away and approached the house, feeling much less conspicuous. When he reached the old chapel he placed his hand on the door in the same place as always. There was a slight indentation there from years of use of the lock-spell, and when the door recognised his hand it opened for him with a soft creak.

He crossed the drawing room and crept up the stairs leading to his and Ginny's bedroom very carefully, surprised when a voice called out, "Dad!" from the other stair.

He turned to find Teddy standing at the open door to his room, shared this evening with Nate and Julian. "When did you get back, Dad? And where's Ginny? I thought you were going to be gone until your birthday was over? Ginny said we had to postpone the party."

"Erm, well, did she tell you why I had to go?"

He shrugged and frowned. "No, she was pretty mysterious about it."

"Well, the good news is that I worked out a solution to a problem the Ministry was having and got to come home early. The bad news is—I can't tell you about it. Top secret, that sort of thing. You know how it is. Go back to bed, Teddy. We'll have the party tomorrow as scheduled." He wasn't sure why he said this, remembering what Ginny had told him about this day, while he'd been with Tilda in the summer of nineteen-ninety-six, but some strange impulse had governed his mouth before his brain could intervene.

"Okay. Happy birthday, Dad!"

Harry looked at him, at his fifteen-year-old son, still so innocent despite what he'd gone through with Zabini. He had no idea what lay ahead.

"Thank you, Teddy. Good night!" he added, his voice catching for a moment. Teddy didn't notice but returned to his bedroom and closed the door. Harry looked around the cavernous drawing room that had once been the sanctuary of St Clare's. The copper hood on the fireplace gleamed in the moonlight streaming through the amber-coloured diamond-leaded windows and the clock ticked the minutes with a casual carelessness, as if each moment he was in this time, seeing his son at this age, before Teddy had shouldered so many very heavy burdens, wasn't as precious as gold.

Shaking himself, Harry turned and continued to climb the stairs to his and Ginny's room. When he opened the heavy carved door, he found that the lights were out and the bed didn't look slept-in. Where was Ginny? he wondered. He opened the door to the en suite bath, but that was empty as well. "Ginny?" he called softly into the empty rooms. The only answer was the wind brushing a fir tree against the window over their bed, over and over, the sound of their marriage bed, the sound that lulled them to sleep whenever they were here, in their home, instead of at Hogwarts.

 _When she Disapparated from the shop, where did she go?_

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	59. Split Personality

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 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Fifty-Nine**

 **Split Personality**

 **#/#/#**

Harry put his Cloak on again and was about to raise his wand to Disapparate back to Parvati's when he remembered that he couldn't do that, due to the Anti-Apparition jinxes on the house. Sighing, he kept the Cloak on as he carefully opened and closed the bedroom door and crept out of the house again, walking as lightly as he could to the closest spot in the graveyard from which he could safely Apparate. When he returned he found Parvati sitting at her Reading table doing a Tarot spread and frowning deeply. He startled her by pulling off the Cloak suddenly.

"Harry! Don't _do_ that! And—what did you do to your hair? And clothes?" She squinted at him. "Erm, as weird as this may sound, _how_ old are you?"

"Sixty-four. I made myself look like Younger Me in case the kids saw me. And Teddy did, so it was a good thing." He bit his lip. "But Ginny wasn't there. At the house. I have no idea where she is."

"She never told you where she went? Later on, I mean."

He shook his head, his brow deeply furrowed. "Don't worry about it, Parvati. I'm trying not to." She raised one brow, clearly unconvinced that he wasn't worrying about this. "Ginny never told me that she went anywhere before the morning. She told me that she went back to the house to wake the kids once the morning came, and she did some sort of complicated magic to make the kids think I was there for my birthday after all, even though I wasn't, so they didn't assume anything was wrong. But I assumed that she stayed _here_ during the night. She was here when I got back from Tilda's, sleeping on the couch in the shop."

Parvati shook her head in confusion. "It's very disconcerting, Harry, that you speak of things that haven't yet happened yet as though they happened a very long time ago."

He shrugged. "For me, they did. Thirty-two years ago. Half my life. And the entire life of the Harry Potter you just helped go back to the night of his sixteenth birthday."

She sat down wearily, drumming her fingers on the skirted table, next to the crystal ball. "All right, then, if she was here when you got back, I won't worry about it. Perhaps she just went home to check on the kids?"

"I told you. She said that she went back in the _morning_. It's after midnight, but hardly morning."

Parvati yawned, attempting to cover her mouth for the sake of manners. "Speaking of which, I say, Harry, have you ever noticed how inconvenient it is for midnight to come, oh, in the middle of the night?"

Harry smiled at her. "You do get out-of-sorts when you miss sleep, don't you? Always have done. Why don't you go back to bed? I'll take care of myself. Don't worry about me."

Parvati started to go toward the stairs but stopped short. "What do you mean, 'always have done'? You act like you—" She stopped, examining him shrewdly. "You didn't have a memory charm put on you, did you? You remember absolutely everything about the rest of your life, I assume? About the future."

He sighed. "All thirty-two years of it, since this night. There's one little patchy spot in the past that I don't remember, but that's my choice. That's for the sake of two marriages. And several friendships."

"What?"

He smiled at her, a clear affection shining in his brilliant green eyes. "Don't worry about it, Love."

She started when he called her this and stood in his path, trying to get up the nerve to tell off the Minister for Magic. Future.

"Listen, Harry, I need to know. Have I completely and permanently screwed up your marriage by sending you back in time? If you don't tell me, I'll—I'll use some form of Divination to find out myself, but somehow I _will_."

Harry put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her as if he weren't really hearing her. "Why don't you rest and we'll talk tomorrow?" he said, still gazing at her in a completely disarming way that was making Parvati's pulse race. And then suddenly, he put his hand against her cheek and shook his head. "Were you ever this young? This innocent?"

She backed up from his hand before turning around and moving toward the stairs. "I'm neither young nor innocent anymore, Harry. And I think you'd better stop behaving as if I'm Tilda and you're sixteen if we're going to get through the next twenty-four hours."

#/#/#

Ginny felt deeply ashamed. She _knew_ what it was like to have feelings for someone who didn't return them, how painful it could be to discuss that person's "real" relationship with another person, but she'd blundered into Theo's room in the middle of the night anyway. She remembered, vividly, how her heart had clenched when she'd suggested to Harry that he talk to Cho Chang. She also remembered how light her heart felt when he'd told her that that wasn't what he was thinking about. Or who he was thinking about, even though it was Sirius and not _her_.

And now she'd put Theo in the same position, but intentionally so. Harry never asked for her to come to the library with his Easter egg. But in those days, she looked for any opportunity she could to be alone with him, as pathetic as it was, in the unlikely event that he would suddenly realise that he had feelings for her. She didn't admit to herself until much later that that was what she was doing, but when she and Harry started going out she saw her earlier behaviour for what it was.

She confessed why she'd come: Harry had travelled back in time to be with Tilda. And get her pregnant. And she was feeling unloved and unwanted. He nodded while she spoke, not looking at her.

"I'm terribly sorry, Theo. I should leave."

He put his hand on her arm to stop her, then pulled his hand back abruptly, as though the contact had stung. "First, I should tell you, Ginny," he said in a rush, as if afraid he wouldn't get the words out if he didn't do it quickly. "I'm leaving."

She stared at him. "Did you not hear me? I said that _I_ was leaving. You don't have to."

He shook his head impatiently. "That's not what I mean. I mean—I'm leaving Hogwarts. Well, actually, I'm not just leaving Hogwarts. I'm leaving the country."

Frowning, Ginny grabbed the nearest chair and sat abruptly. "You're _what_? Why?"

Theo snorted and shook his head, looking at the floor. Finally, he lifted his eyes to hers and said, "Do you really need to ask that?"

Ginny opened her eyes wide in disbelief. "Evidently, I do. Why on earth—?"

#/#/#

Theo stared helplessly at her.

"It's because of you, Ginny!" he shouted in a whisper. Her mouth worked soundlessly and he wanted to kiss her badly, but he went on talking so that he wouldn't. "Don't act like you don't know. You _do_! You know that I'm hopelessly in love with you, that's why you came here."

Swallowing, she said, "You said that already, but all I know is—that you are my good friend. And Harry's. And—and, yes, I knew that you—you cared about me and might—might make me feel like I'm not a complete troll who Harry would be mad to marry in the first place if I came to see you, but—"

"Yes, Theo's always good for an ego-boost, isn't he?" He sighed, running his fingers through his black hair so that it stood on end. "Listen, I'm not cross with you, not really. I'm cross with myself. This has gone on long enough. It's true enough, too, that until tonight you've never once done anything to make me think your intentions toward me included anything other than platonic friendship. And even tonight, it's clear that the only reason you're here is that you're madly in love with your husband." He sat, shaking his head. "I've only myself to blame. I shouldn't have stayed as long as I did. I've been preserved in amber, still at Hogwarts. It's like I never finished school. I need to finish with Hogwarts, Ginny. I need to grow up. So I'm leaving."

Tears filled her eyes. Theo looked away. Somehow, her moist eyes were the equivalent, for another woman, of taking off her clothes. "Where are you going?" she whispered.

"I've been offered a job at the Capetown Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The name is misleading; it's actually on an island off the coast near Capetown. It's Unplottable. The island's a wizarding colony, rather isolated from Muggle life on the mainland. That's where their Ministry for Magic is and where most wizards in South Africa live. There are three villages on the island, as it's rather large. Even though each village has a school for younger children—don't you wish we had schools like that here?—there's just one combined school on the northern headland for the older kids. There are day students who continue to live with their parents in the village, if their houses are reasonably close to the school, and boarders whose families live farther away, in the village at the south end of the island, mostly. There are also boarders from the mainland, especially Muggle-born kids."

Ginny sniffed and blinked, trying not to let her tears fall. "Will you—will you teach Transfiguration still?" she said quietly.

"No, Charms, which is my second-best area, so I'm not worried. I'll also be the deputy headmaster. The previous Charms master was, you see. He took a job as the new head of one of the village schools because that headmaster is retiring. They start teaching kids there to control and use magic younger than we do here, and they're not forbidden to do magic at home because the day-students wouldn't be able to do their homework in their parents' houses if that were the law.

"The Transfiguration master is retiring in a few years. Then I can switch back to teaching that. Plus, as deputy headmaster, I'll be able to stop teaching eventually and take over as the head." He grimaced and looked somewhat chagrined. "I love Minerva, but I think she'll probably be headmistress for the next twenty years. And Severus has been the assistant headmaster since she took over from Albus. Not much room for anyone who wants to move up."

"Theo," Ginny said softly, unable, finally, to stop her tears from falling. "I'm so sorry that you feel like you have to leave because of me. You _don't_ , not really."

"Yes, Ginny, yes, I do." He cleared his throat and looked away from her. "Something else that's not going to happen if I stay at Hogwarts is meeting anyone who will make me forget how I feel about _you_ , someone who will make me feel that way about _her_ instead. Only the heads of the houses live at the Capetown school itself. They and their families live in bungalows between the boys' and girls' dorms for each house, and the rest of the staff live in the village. I could live in a community with other witches and wizards and see people on a daily basis besides my own students, who I shouldn't even consider being with, and my—my—" He glanced at Ginny quickly and swallowed before looking away again; "—my colleagues, most of whom are either married or elderly or, well, people I don't even want to have a cup of tea with, let alone snog."

Ginny thought of Professor Borodin, Binns's successor, and made a face. "Maurice is just trying to fit in, asking the other teachers to tea in his rooms."

Theo sighed. "I know, but if he were any more pompous… If I wanted to listen to lectures about magical history I wouldn't have slept through Binns for five years!" he said, unable not to smile just a little. Ginny wiped her eyes and smiled as well.

"Yes, students know not to close their eyes in your classroom if they don't want you to transfigure their chairs from under them. How many sleepy first years have woken up to find that they're sitting on a hedgehog?"

Theo laughed half-heartedly. "Well, you know how Minerva feels about Transfiguring students as punishment. She didn't say we couldn't transfigure the _furniture_."

#/#/#

Ginny looked at him for what felt like the first time. He really wasn't much like the boy she'd come to know in her fifth year, the boy who was filled with remorse because he'd done exactly what she'd done in her first year: written in Tom Riddle's diary. He was taller and stronger and a little less pale. She'd seen him bounce Charlotte on his knee and play Exploding Snap with Ruby and Rory and throw sticks for Hades to chase. She knew that he'd be a good father and a good husband, that he deserved to have a normal life.

She smiled as bravely as she could, saying, "It sounds lovely, Theo. Much more conducive to family life than Hogwarts. It's just—"

"What?" he whispered, suddenly looking hopeful.

"It's so far away. The other side of the equator! You'll be celebrating Christmas during the summer, and when we're going back to school in September you'll be having spring."

He shrugged. "I'm rather looking forward to that, actually. Their first term starts in mid-January. There's a fortnight-long holiday during the last half of April, but sometimes sooner, depending on when Easter falls. After the break a new term starts on the first of May, then there's a winter break for about three weeks, in August, and the third term starts in September. The students sit their exams at the end of November, and we have all of December and about half of January for the summer hols and Christmas hols rolled into one. It makes a lot of sense, in my opinion.

"I'm not going to start until January. Minerva knows; she's looking for a replacement for me, but in case she doesn't find one she'll teach the winter and summer terms herself."

"You've already told Minerva?" she said very softly. "When were you going to tell, erm, the rest of the staff?"

He looked abashed. "Erm, Severus and Tilda already know. They were in the staff room one day when a great tropical bird flew in with my letter from the headmaster, asking me to come down to an interview. I was able to do it on a weekend, didn't miss any lessons."

She felt a little miffed. "Who else knows?" she asked, trying not to sound like she owned him.

"Well—everyone else," he said weakly, not looking at her. "On the staff, I mean. Other than you and Harry. I didn't feel like getting into the matter of my leaving for South Africa so that I could stop mooning over his wife, and the kids will find out soon enough. You know how the students are—if they sense that someone is on the way out, it's like blood in the water to them."

Ginny snorted. "Oh, Theo. You're a good friend and a good teacher. What will we do without you?"

"There are other teachers to be had. Minerva could always hire, oh, Rita Skeeter," he said mischievously. "She wanted the job when I applied."

Ginny guffawed. "I think Minerva would hire Gilderoy Lockhart to teach again, even in his addled state, before she'd hire Rita."

Theo did his best to smile, but she suspected that he felt more than a little sad, so it came off as more of a grimace. "You're probably right. But I'm sure she'll find someone. She could go looking in other countries, if it comes to that."

"I think that would definitely be a last resort for Minerva." Reducing her voice to a whisper, she said, "She doesn't think much of the magical education in other countries."

Theo nodded. "I know. I got an earful about being careful, just in case the Dutch influence is still very strong in Capetown. But since the chief administrative language of the wizarding colony and school is English, she didn't criticize too sharply. I've heard her say a lot worse about Durmstrang, for instance, as well as some American schools. A variety of African languages are also spoken at the school, though I only need to know English to teach."

Ginny sighed. "I should probably just go home and wait it out there, so the children have me at hand in the morning. I just—I _hate_ standing about waiting. And waiting for _this_ to be over will seem like waiting a lifetime."

Theo gazed sadly at her. "Try to focus on the big picture, Ginny. You love Harry and he loves you. Teddy is a good boy, a good stepson, and you love him and his sisters and father love him." He paused for a moment, as if unsure about what he was about to say. "If I'm not being indelicate—had you and Harry thought about trying to have another baby?"

"You mean trying to have a son?" she said tonelessly, staring out the window at the moon hanging over the motley roof tiles of the businesses on Diagon Alley.

"Yes. You wanted a boy so badly."

She shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. "Boy, girl, it doesn't really matter. We love all of our children, Theo."

"I know you do. But I also know that you had this idea that you wanted to have a son with Harry."

She looked him in the eye. "I got over that years ago. We love our daughters and are content. Harry has a son. I just don't happen to be his mother." Her voice shook at the end, betraying her emotions. He looked like he was sorry he'd pried. It wasn't any of his business whether she'd got over the need to give her husband a son. He was treading into an area he probably didn't care to think about: the fact that Harry and Ginny, as a normal married couple, had a sex life and had procreated. And might procreate again. They would almost _definitely_ have a sex life when he returned, even if it suffered slightly from Harry's trip to see Tilda on his thirty-second birthday. But Theo had seen how strong they were over the years. It was probably part of the reason he'd decided to leave, to get on with his life.

Ginny turned and put her hand on his arm. "You're doing the right thing. I made the same decision, years ago, and it was also the right thing to do. Of course, for me it didn't involve moving to South Africa."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I decided that I could never _make_ Harry feel a certain way about me, and I started focussing on other boys. Michael Corner. Dean Thomas. And no, those relationships didn't work out, for different reasons, and Harry _did_ decide he fancied me. But what if he hadn't? What point would there have been for me to sit about all of my life waiting for him? And if he had never decided that I was anything other than a friend I'd have had a _life_ , I'd have had people I cared about and could have a life _with_." She took both of his hands in hers. "You deserve a life, Theo. I'm so glad you're reaching out and _taking_ one, I really am."

#/#/#

Theo knew that he should be paying attention to what she was saying, and, more importantly, _heeding_ what she was saying, but the feel of her soft hands in his was somewhat distracting, almost as much as the expression in her large brown eyes as she looked up at him. He pulled his hands from hers as gently as he could, turning away from her so he could close his eyes and steel himself, silently tell himself not to take her in his arms and kiss her hard, so he would not forever alienate her and betray his friendship with Harry. He was _not_ going to do that. Not now, not when he'd got the strength and the resolve to leave her, to reach out and _take_ a life for himself, as she'd said.

"Thank you, Ginny," he said, looking up and realising that because he could see her in the mirror hanging over the mantle, she could see _him_ , too, and knew what his face looked like after he turned away from her. She seemed unnerved as she looked back at him through the medium of the mirror.

"Um, I—I should go. Like I said. I'll just Apparate to the grounds around the house."

She didn't wait for him to answer but immediately pulled out her wand and disappeared silently. Ginny usually at least squeezed his hand before leaving him and most of the time this was also accompanied by a peck on the cheek. She didn't seem to want to touch him this time, though; she could see how thin his resolve was. She had seen him without his mask.

Theo swallowed, continuing to stare at the mirror's reflection of the empty space where she'd been.

"Do you think she bought that? I don't," the mirror said suddenly in a shrill, opinionated voice. Theo jumped in surprise.

"Erm…"

"You know, before you turn away from someone and stop pretending, you should probably make sure that you're not both facing a mirror," it continued in a snide, know-it-all voice.

"Oh, bugger off," he snapped, throwing his dressing gown over the mirror.

#/#/#

Harry gazed up at the stairs. Parvati was moving around in her flat, preparing to return to bed. He swallowed, fighting the urge to go up to her, thinking of her face when he'd left her earlier that evening, her hair still as black as the woman to whom he'd just been talking but the creases around her eyes slightly deeper, her hands less youthful, having seen twice as many years as the young woman climbing back into her empty bed upstairs.

" _I suppose I deserve this, since I helped you to go back and see Tilda."_

" _No, no, Love, don't think of it like that. If I don't go—"_

" _I know, I know. You already went, so… It's not that I'm trying to stop you. Don't you think I know this is how it has to be? It's just—it's karma, it really is... It's no more than I deserve."_

" _No, no, sssh! Don't do this to yourself…"_

He shook himself, tempted yet again to go up the stairs. But she didn't think of him that way. Not yet. He pictured his bedroom at St Clare's as he'd just seen it, empty and dark. Perhaps he should just spend the night there and then come back to the shop in the morning. Less temptation that way.

 _Of course_ , he thought while walking to the house through the gravestones, after he'd Apparated, _this way I have ample opportunity to obsess about where Ginny is spending the night instead_. He let himself into the house again, wondering where she had gone, what she was doing, and with whom.

This time he didn't encounter any of the children as he made his way to the bedroom. He was glad, though, that he'd maintained the appearance he'd assumed, so that if any of them had a bad dream in the night and came running into his and Ginny's bedroom, they'd find a Harry Potter who, at first glance, appeared to be thirty-two years old, rather than sixty-four. He could try to get some sleep and then consider what to do with the rest of his sixty-fourth birthday when morning came.

He didn't expect to be able to stop thinking about where Ginny was but ended up falling asleep almost as soon as he'd undressed and put his head on the pillow. He was very, very deeply asleep and firmly enmeshed in a dream about the first time he'd invited Ginny over to the house, about a month before their wedding, which was also the occasion on which the twins were conceived, when he was suddenly jolted awake by someone screaming his name:

" _Harry!_ What are you _doing_ here?"

Ginny stood in the doorway to the bedroom, her eyes wide with shock. It was still dark and it took him a moment to work out where and when he was, but once he'd done so he still had only a vague idea of how to explain himself.

"Ssssh, Ginny! Do you want to wake the kids?" he whispered. She twisted around, looking across the expanse of the drawing room to the stair on the other side of the space, but Harry didn't hear the other bedroom doors opening or feet pounding on the stairs.

"It's okay, they didn't hear me," she said in a more normal tone of voice, carefully closing the door behind her and Imperturbing it, so that even if the children pressed their ears against it—or Fred's and George's Extendable Ears—nothing could be heard that was said or done inside their bedroom. "It's just—I wasn't expecting to see you! I mean, if you didn't go through with it…" She sat on the bed and took his hand. The moonlight showed him that her eyes were shining with tears. "Won't—won't Teddy disappear? And other people? Won't you be changing the timeline? You don't have to do this for me. I'm working on it, handling it. I wish I were more graceful about it, but please don't think that I'm so selfish that I don't want Teddy to exist."

He wasn't paying a great deal of attention to what she was saying because it was _Ginny_ who was saying it, Ginny whom he had loved and lived with for so many years, Ginny who had been so suddenly taken from him, leaving him a mere shell of his former self. He felt like he might cry as he sat up and put his hand on her cheek. "Don't worry, Love. It's all right. You see, I'm here _and_ I'm there. The spell not only takes me back half my lifetime, it sort of, erm, _divides_ me in half," he said quickly, improvising madly. "Well, not _divides_. It's not like I'm only half-here or half-there. I'm really me, and I'm really in both places, and I think I'll have all of the memories from here _and_ there afterward. It's hard to explain."

She shrugged when she heard that. "It's magic. That's all you need to say. I just—I wasn't _expecting_ to get to see you at all on your birthday, and here you are!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him. "This just, well, it makes it a bit easier to forget that there's _another_ you sixteen years ago, doing something I'd rather not be thinking about you doing with another woman."

Her touch inflamed his senses, as it always had. Her chest was pressed again his, cloth against skin. He had felt an immediate physical response to her presence the moment he'd opened his eyes and seen her. That response was quickly growing more—responsive. His hand shook as he laced it into the hair at the back of her head and pulled her mouth to his. Even as he kissed her he could barely believe that she was in his arms again, young and whole, warm and _real_. He had never again thought to hold her like this, to be with her. It was a gift, a gift he didn't dare refuse.

When she broke the kiss, she looked at him wonderingly, as though uncertain who he was, and he thought for a second that she was going to guess his secret, that he wasn't really her thirty-two-year-old husband. He spoke quickly, to forestall any more scrutiny. "Do you know what I was thinking about, before you woke me up? What I was dreaming about?"

She looked affectionately at him and ran her fingers lightly up and down his spine, making him even more aroused. "What were you dreaming about?" she asked, a knowing smile playing around the corners of her mouth.

"I was dreaming about the first time we made love, here, on the hearthrug before the fire," he breathed into her ear before nipping the lobe very lightly. She let out a soft moan and he continued, "You're the only woman I want to be with, Ginny. The only woman I ever…" He stopped, thinking about what had happened when he returned from the day with Tilda. "Ginny," he said suddenly, changing direction slightly. "I just thought of something: when I get back from—well, when the spell ends, the birthday wish spell, I'll have Parvati put a memory charm on me so that I _won't_ remember it, not really. That way I'll never even be able to recall being with another woman." He thought of something else and said, "Which will probably also make Tilda and Severus more comfortable, as well. I'll be able to look both of them in the eye again because I will have absolutely no idea of anything Tilda and I did together, sixteen years ago. It will be a blank to me."

She stared at him. "You would do that? For—for _me_?"

He stared back at her, wishing he'd spent more time gazing at Ginny while he had had the chance, all those years. She gave a small gasp, perhaps from recognising how very much he loved her and he kissed her again, deeply, then pressed his lips to her brow, her chin, her nose. "For us. All four of us. Of course I would, Ginny. You have no idea how much I love you, how much I don't want to hurt you. I don't need to remember being with Tilda. I'll know that it produced Teddy, and that's all I need to know. What else matters?"

He caught a tear running down her cheek and she smiled wistfully. "I love you so much," she whispered. "Thank you."

She kissed him again, and he could feel all of her heart in that kiss, all of her love and longing. He knew that she would never again doubt his love for her nor feel threatened by Tilda, and now he knew _why_. Any doubts he had had about whether he should do this, be with her when she thought he was half the age he was dropped away as he held her and they kissed and cried together. She stood and slowly removed her clothes, staring at him with a look that burned, before coming to him again.

It was as though his dream of the night the twins had been conceived had become reality, the only reality that mattered. _I'm here, I'm now, and that's all that matters,_ he thought before wrapping his arms around her afterward, hugging her to him tightly as he dropped again into sleep, but this time a dreamless, peaceful sleep with the woman he had loved for almost forty-eight years by his side.

#/#/#

 **Please be a responsible reader and review.**

#/#/#

Listen to **Quantum Harry, the Podcast,** available on iTunes, Stitcher and on the **Quantum Harry** YouTube channel. Subscribe today!

You can also follow me on Twitter **QHPodcast** and/or Instagram **bl_purdom**.


	60. Will You Still Need Me?

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Sixty**

 **Will You Still Need Me?**

 **#/#/#**

When Harry woke, he felt slightly guilty about Parvati, but brushed it quickly aside. _I warned her, years ago_ , he thought. _She knew this would happen, and it was one of the reasons we never married, never even made a public declaration or commitment of any kind. We're just playing it by ear, it's not the same as being married at all…_

He brushed the back of his hand gently down Ginny's cheek, wondering whether the other Harry had created Teddy yet. He was glad he hadn't had _his_ Parvati put a memory charm on him, so he could still remember everything that happened after his thirty-second birthday. He didn't recall what actually happened _on_ the day that he went to visit Tilda, but Tilda later told him that the other memory charm had worn off, that it was not only temporary, as designed, but far more short-lived than planned. Somehow he thought that that would be even more difficult to pull off, a charm designed to make a person temporarily forget _thirty-two_ years, rather than just sixteen, which hadn't even worked perfectly. Plus, he didn't want the odd sensation of not-remembering and then suddenly randomly remembering. It was far better this way. And in nine months, in the earlier time, Tilda would have a son she loved dearly, a son who would change her life and lead to her meeting the man she would marry.

He sat bolt upright in the bed and did the calculations in his head. Nine months. _Nine months!_ He looked at Ginny, languid and seemingly-boneless after making love to him more than once before falling asleep. He'd forgotten how— _energetic_ —she could be, how insatiable she seemed, especially when she was particularly keyed-up with emotion. However, it was growing lighter while they were making love the last time, so she was able to see him better and had noticed that his body looked—different. He was still in reasonably good shape, as a sixty-four-year-old man, but his body didn't look _exactly_ as it had when he was thirty-two. She worried about this at first, wondering whether the spell that had "split" him had also damaged him in some way, but he assured her that he felt fine and would probably go back to looking more like himself after his two halves were reunited. And she had put the worry aside and responded to his touch once more.

How stupid he was! He should have realised, years ago—of _course_ this was how it happened! Ginny had gone into labour on _Teddy's birthday_ , during his sixteenth birthday party, _nine months_ after Harry's birthday. He remembered Remus telling him once that he'd been born exactly nine months after a particularly raucous Hallowe'en party that his parents had hosted at their home in Godric's Hollow, hinting broadly about this while Harry blushed furiously. Was it something in the Potter genes? As far as he could tell, Ruby and Rory were also born exactly nine months after the first time he and Ginny were together. Teddy was born nine months after Harry's sixteenth birthday. And nine months after his thirty-second birthday, right on schedule…

Harry started laughing as he understood, which woke Ginny, though she didn't open her eyes. Instead she reached blindly for him, running her hand down his chest and wrapping it around him in a very direct manner that immediately caused him to gasp. "What's so funny?" she asked, her eyes still closed while her hand moved more quickly.

Harry could barely get the words out. "I—bloody hell—I've completely forgotten, somehow. Something— _guh_ —seems to have distracted me." And soon they were attacking each other again and he'd forgotten about calculations and gestation periods and everything else in the world except making love to Ginny.

#/#/#

When he woke again he heard the shower running in their en suite bath. Grinning, he joined Ginny in the shower after Imperturbing the walls and floor of the room, so the children wouldn't hear the noises they were making.

While they were preparing breakfast, Harry noticed that she was definitely walking 'funny'. He came up behind her while she stood at the cooker, pushing eggs around a pan with a fork, and whispered in her ear, "You're walking a bit _differently_ this morning, Mrs. Potter. Why is that?"

"I think," she answered him, "that it is called Shagging in the Shower. And on the bathroom floor. And the bedroom floor. And while you're sitting in your favourite chair."

He laughed and pulled her away from the cooker, fork still in her hand, starting to dance with her around the kitchen table. " _When I get older, losing my hair_ ," he sang softly, off-key; " _many years from now_ …"

"Planning on going bald now, are we?" Ginny said, laughing as he dipped and twirled her.

" _Will you still be sending me a Valentine, birthday greeting, bottle of wine?_ " he continued. She went along in an ungainly two-step as they bumped into each other and trod on each other's feet. They ended up leaning against the dresser, clutching their sides, unable to do anything but laugh at their own dancing incompetence until Ginny noticed that the eggs were smoking a bit. Harry let her go back to the cooker after giving her a smacking kiss.

"What is that song?" she wanted to know as she resumed pushing the eggs around. Harry started to answer by way of standing behind her and kissing her but was interrupted.

"Dad! I almost forgot you were here after all. Happy birthday!" Teddy said suddenly as he came round the corner and saw Harry starting to nuzzle Ginny's neck. "Was that you _singing_?" Harry leapt back as Ruby and Rory followed Teddy to the table and sat. Ruby rolled her eyes.

"Are you two going to be mushy _all day_?" she whinged loudly. Ginny turned as red as her hair but the children couldn't see this, as she was still facing the cooker.

Nate and Julian followed the twins into the kitchen. It was so strange for Harry to see Ruby and Rory and Charlotte, who was carried by Rory, as little girls again. He pictured them as he'd last seen them, handsome women with spouses and children, accomplished careers. It was very odd to think of what their lives would become as they sat before him as children, young and innocent, ignorant of what lay before them.

"Teddy told me you were back," Nate said upon seeing Harry, "but not why. Oh, and Happy birthday, by the way. Not that you're not welcome in your own house on your birthday."

Harry clapped his hands. "Change of plans! Everything's fine and I'm here after all. Oh, try not to look so _happy_ about it."

Charlotte laughed and ran to him. He scooped her up. "We're happy about it, Daddy. Of course we are!"

Harry hugged her thin little body to him, remembering, remembering this time of his life, and feeling that he was unlikely to forget again.

"Then let's have a party!" he exclaimed, before resuming dancing, this time with Charlotte in his arms as his partner.

" _Will you still need me, will you still feed me…_ " he sang, twirling his daughter around the kitchen and feeling happier than he remembered being for a very long time.

#/#/#

"Stop that man!" the constable cried to bystanders as she continued to pursue Harry. He looked around wildly, just in case someone heeded her request, and to his shock a quite diminutive old woman was rearing back with her handbag, preparing to hit him with it as he went past. He veered to the left to avoid her, ducking behind a kiosk selling souvenir _Brighton_ tee-shirts. As quickly as he could he pulled out his Cloak and put it on. After he was hidden from view he quickly ran around the kiosk and back in the direction of the constable, who was running toward him at break-neck speed, looking impressively like an advert for joining the police force.

"He went behind it!" the old woman screamed shrilly, pointing with her handbag, evidently quite disappointed that she hadn't been able to attack Harry.

It was unavoidable: the Cloak brushed the constable as she went past. Harry clutched at the Cloak with both hands, making certain that it didn't slip off him. He saw the constable hesitate for a moment, looking puzzled, before continuing toward the kiosk.

Harry left the pier as quickly as he could, walking back in the direction of the café, but he froze when he heard the constable's voice behind him. She and the old woman were walking together as the two of them attempted to agree on a description of Harry.

 _Bloody hell. I'm either going to have to keep the Cloak on or change my appearance again._ There was nothing for it, he had to change once more. It wouldn't hurt to find other clothes, either. That would mean stealing something to wear, if he was going to avoid doing magic. But as Harry leaned against a phone box and reflected on the things that had occurred on his sixteenth birthday, he realised that there were even more indicators of his presence in this time than he'd originally thought.

He stopped worrying about it and just breathed deeply, trying to catch his breath after the running. He thought about the young man who'd been eating with him and changed his hair to the same brown colour, straight and hanging over his brow, hiding his scar. He kept some facial hair but reduced it to a trim moustache instead of the full, curly red beard he'd been sporting. The final touch was to enlarge his nose to something he considered Snape-like.

While waiting for Tilda and young Harry to emerge from the café, he carefully avoiding coming into contact with anyone who couldn't see him. When they finally appeared, he followed them behind the café. From a distance he heard his younger self talking while evidently peering in the back window of the car.

"Are you sure it was safe to put the car back here? It looks like someone's gone through our things. Look at it."

Tilda shrugged. "It shifted while we were driving. Don't worry about it. Everything seems to be here, yeah?"

The boy nodded grudgingly while removing the picnic hamper from the car. Harry followed them to what passed for the beach at Brighton, which was mainly shingle with some actual sand in a few isolated areas. He stayed about ten feet behind, trying very hard to avoid bumping into anyone. At least the hard shingle meant that he needn't worry about creating footprints whose source would surely be mysterious to anyone who noticed. Harry was unclear about what was supposed to be so appealing about lying on small pebbles, but a lot of people had decided that this was exactly how they wanted to spend the thirty-first of July. If he'd known this was what the beach was like when he was sixteen he might not have been so keen to come.

Tilda found a spot to her liking and threw everything she'd been carrying onto the ground, relief on her perspiring face. Going to a nearby cabana, she called through the fabric, "Hello? Is this one being used?" When no reply came she retrieved her bag and told young Harry that she'd be back in a few minutes. Harry took this opportunity to slip into the small striped cabana before her, hoping she wouldn't notice the flap moving.

He waited in the cramped, eerie space, wondering momentarily how Tilda managed using these things, given her problem with claustrophobia, but he soon found out how: she worked to change her clothes _very_ quickly. She was moving so fast, in fact (she was already wearing her one-piece bathing outfit under her clothes) that she'd nearly finished before Harry managed to get her attention by discreetly clearing his throat. She froze in the act of taking off her shorts.

" _It's me, Tilda. I didn't want to startle you into screaming again._ " He took the Cloak off and she frowned.

" _Harry! What were you thinking back there?_ " she whispered. "And what have you done to your nose? I've been a nervous wreck, trying to work out how I could act normally all day when you'd been arrested for—for _counterfeiting_?" she said in disbelief.

"No, it's real money. But it has the wrong dates, and pictures. From the future. I didn't think. It's all a mess. I completely forgot about the money. There wasn't a lot of planning that went into this—I was informed rather abruptly that it was time to make this little trip into the past. At any rate, I don't have anything to wear on the beach. And that includes something to protect my skin. Could I—?"

She sighed as she searched her bag for something that would help. "Well, I brought an extra pair of shorts for Harry. Not you. You know what I mean. You can wear those. But they're not for swimming, so don't go in the water."

"I wasn't planning to. But remember that when he wants to go in you have to go with him."

She gave him a withering look and he clamped his mouth shut. "I _know_ that, Harry. I'm getting just a little tired of _both_ of you treating me as dim. I do understand some things, I do remember things, and I know what I need to do to keep him safe. Why do you think I'm trying to move as quickly as I can?" She wriggled out of her shorts and stuffed them into her bag before handing Harry a tube of lotion. "Here; this'll protect that fair skin of yours. Put plenty on your new extra-large nose. I've got another for us to use. I usually pack extras of everything, just in case. But _do_ try not to make a scene here at the beach! It was all I could do to distract him from what you were doing in the café!"

He felt properly chastised but at the same time she looked so lovely with the pale blue spandex clinging to her body that he mostly wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her again. He restrained himself, however, nodding gratefully to her, putting the shorts and bottle into his rucksack before donning the Cloak again.

"What are you doing?" She frowned.

"I need to leave with you but I'll have to come back in when no one is using it, take off the Cloak, change into the shorts and leave without the Cloak on. I can't just take the Cloak off in the middle of the beach and I certainly can't come out of here right after _you_ do."

She grimaced, nodding. "All right. I'll try to hold the flap open long enough for you to go through after me."

They managed this manoeuvre without too much awkwardness and Harry watched his teenaged self go to the cabana to change his clothes. When he finally emerged, his thin chest deathly white in the summer sunshine, Harry looked around furtively, waiting for everyone in the vicinity (especially his younger self) to be looking away before discreetly lifting the flap and re-entering the cabana.

He immediately took off the Cloak and was stuffing it into the bag when he heard a slightly shrill voice outside saying, " _It's all right, Paul. No one's in there now._ " Harry froze.

" _Are you sure, Beryl_?"

" _Yes, I'm sure! Go on!_ "

 _Perhaps they're discussing a different cabana?_ Harry thought. But no, a moment later, while Harry's arms were still in his shirtsleeves, an old man's balding head thrust through the flap, startled to see Harry smiling feebly at him.

He immediately retreated, muttering, "Sorry!" As Harry continued to remove his shirt he heard the two bickering.

" _But I didn't see anyone go in._ "

" _Yeah, only ya never see what's really going on, do ya?_ "

" _Oh, and you do, I suppose?_ "

Harry emerged from the cabana with his rucksack slung over his bare shoulder, wearing the shorts Tilda had given him and nothing else but his underwear beneath the shorts. His bare feet felt like they were walking on hot coals because the shingle had been absorbing the sun's warmth all day, and the rucksack was heavy from his shoes. He nodded to the couple whose row he'd caused. They continued to bicker, despite the cabana now being available.

He settled down about ten feet behind Tilda and his younger self. Young Harry was clearly trying _not_ to ogle Tilda. With a small smile he indulged in looking at her without his younger self noticing. He felt momentarily guilty again for what they'd done that morning, but pushed this feeling down, trying not to think about it.

He watched his younger self lie on the shingle near Tilda, swim in the ocean with Tilda, and have conversations with Tilda, all the while wishing that he could spend an entire day with her _now_ , like this, in the open, without having to hide that he was in Brighton because of _her,_ though he was really here because of _him_ , young Harry. He frowned at his younger self, irrationally jealous of the simple act of talking openly to Tilda. He didn't dare. And he had to continually cover his hot, sweating forehead with his hair to hide his scar when what he most wanted to do was push it off his brow and feel a cool breeze on his skin. The one thing he'd never been able to alter about his face with his Metamorphmagus abilities was his scar.

Harry didn't know how long he'd been idly watching them when he heard his younger self cry, " _It's all his bloody fault!_ " Young Harry wiped his face on his arm angrily. Harry couldn't hear what Tilda said to him, putting her hand on his arm. The boy stood impatiently. Harry didn't have to strain at all to hear now.

"No! I'm tired of it all. Someone dies and that makes him a saint? You can't just mistreat someone for seven years and not expect there to be _consequences_! And how _stupid_ was it for Sirius to sit there and listen to me go on and on and not say a bloody word about the _mirror_ and how I should have used that instead? Would it have killed him to—" Harry's heart constricted, his younger self's face freezing as he thought about the words he'd just said. During the tirade Harry had managed to inch closer to them.

"Harry, I know you're angry with them both," Tilda said, trying to placate him. "With your dad and godfather. And maybe that's good; maybe that will help you as you grieve. I know that I'm still working through some of the things my dad did that—"

"Oh, you don't know the half of it when it comes to _your_ dad."

Harry bit his tongue, wishing that his younger self had done the same, instead of being so spiteful and cruel. Watching the two of them, he felt deeply ashamed of how he had behaved. He hadn't counted on this at all, that one of the most painful parts of his time-travelling trip would not be remembering how sick with love he'd been or how fresh his grief over Sirius was; he hadn't counted on the sheer _pain_ of seeing himself as a selfish teenager, saying and doing things he desperately wished he could take back sixteen years later. So many things he wished he'd done differently…

Tilda looked at the boy, frowning. "What do you mean?"

Harry's heart ached, knowing what was coming. Though Tilda's reconciliation with her mother would come of it, his shame deepened with every second that he had to witness his own recklessness, his cruelty in telling Tilda about finding the silver. He followed them to the phone box as discreetly as he could, trying to appear to be seeking for something on the ground as he drew nearer and nearer to the pier. He stood at a rail, looking out to sea, while out of the corner of his eye he was really watching _her_ , collapsing in the phone box, crying as she learned the truth about her parents, about her childhood.

 _And how will we explain all of this to Teddy someday?_ he wondered. He would want the truth, eventually. The _real_ , unvarnished truth. Teddy was fifteen. Harry remembered fifteen, the rage that ruled him, the injustices he felt were looming at him from every turn. Teddy was as famous as, or possibly _more_ famous than Harry had been at the same age, due to what had happened when Zabini had unintentionally given him his power. He was no longer gawped at because he was Harry Potter's son. Now he was the centre of attention because he was _himself_ , in _addition_ to Harry being his dad, not instead of. He didn't want his son to experience the same uncertainty he had, the eerie _not knowing_ , the feeling that everyone else in the world knew something about him that he did not.

With a gasp, Harry realised that the memory charm he'd had Parvati put on him was collapsing. He wasn't sure why, but it was.

 _He remembered_ …

Tilda finally emerged from the phone box and threw her arms around young Harry, hugging him tightly. As he watched the boy brush the hair out of her tear-streaked face, Harry's stomach clenched painfully. He thought, _I've cheated on my wife. I've created an illegitimate son, a son I won't even know about until he shows up at Hogwarts._

He saw Tilda kiss his young self on the cheek and take the boy's hand in hers. He wished he could turn back the clock yet again, go back to that morning and _not_ sleep with her, or go back to the previous night and not spend it in her bedroom. He knew that that would be changing time, that Teddy wouldn't exist, but he couldn't stop the pain tearing through him as the memories cascaded back into his consciousness.

In stark contrast to the way Harry felt, Tilda looked very peaceful as they turned to walk back to the beach.

 _I'm sorry, Ginny, so sorry_ …

He knew that Teddy had to be born. But now he wished again, as he had when he was sixteen, that he had actually slept with Tilda that night as a sixteen-year-old, though not for the same reason he'd wanted to when he _was_ sixteen. If he'd done it then he could have told Ginny what had happened when they were still just friends and she wouldn't have called him a liar when Teddy showed up at Hogwarts twelve years later. He wouldn't look like an idiot, denying repeatedly that he'd slept with Tilda even while the magical genetic test proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was Teddy's father. And his son wouldn't have doubted his willingness to be a real father to him, to come forward and do the right thing.

Then he remembered _Snape._ It had taken so many years to cultivate a tentative détente with him. He was stepfather to his son, and now he'd betrayed Severus Snape by sleeping with his wife. It was years before she would be his wife, technically, but in the world Harry had come from she was off-limits, married to his colleague.

He didn't follow them back to the beach. Instead he walked to the car again, covering himself with the Invisibility Cloak when he'd determined that no one was about before leaning against the searing hot metal to weep for what he'd done.

#/#/#

Harry had gone to sleep in the back seat of the car, lulled by the heat, but was jolted awake when young Harry and Tilda returned with the beach gear. Luckily, Tilda opened the rear door on the driver's side first, so he was able to slip past her, though her gasp told him that she felt the Cloak brush her legs.

" _I need to do something_ ," he whispered. She opened her eyes wide, but he could see that she didn't dare say anything in response. His younger self didn't notice anything. He was making a great racket putting things in the back seat of the car and commenting on how much more room there seemed to be than earlier.

" _I won't be riding back with you. I'll meet you at your house later_ ," he said very quietly before striding away in his Cloak. Then something made him stop to observe the two of them again. They were walking away from the car. When they reached the beach once more they removed their shoes and carried them. It looked like what it was: a teacher walking on the beach with her former pupil. She was an adult and he was not. There was no doubt that they were not equals. Harry sighed. It was no good to wish that he'd slept with Tilda when he was sixteen. That wouldn't have made anyone's life easier. He might as well wish that he hadn't taken the bus to New Stokington. He could have performed accidental magic at number four, Privet Drive that would have sparked a different sort of disaster, like his being expelled and having his wand broken.

He strode in the opposite direction, well away from the beach and the pier. Wandering the streets of Brighton, carefully avoiding people, he waited until he felt he had put enough distance between himself and young Harry to do magic. Finally, he took a deep breath and removed his wand from his rucksack under the Cloak. When he opened his eyes, he was in the scrubby park at Grimmauld Place. He walked purposefully to where he knew number twelve would appear, which it finally did when he drew close enough. He tapped the door lightly with his wand, hearing the myriad locks and bolts securing the door give way.

He opened the door slowly and tried to shut it very carefully, but the summer humidity was making it stick and he had to put his shoulder to it, plus the racket of the bolts locking again was unbelievably noisy. Noisy enough to—

" _Harry!_ "

He froze, hoping that the Cloak was still covering him completely. Ron had flung open the drawing room door. Hermione was at his side, breathless and wide-eyed. However, the two of them stopped short, seeing a front hall that appeared to be completely empty, lit only dimly by the flickering serpent-shaped gas lamps. The hall was not silent, however. Ron's shouting—and probably also Harry forcing the door closed—had not gone unnoticed by Mrs Black.

"But—but—" Ron sputtered, looking around in confusion.

" _THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS, DEFILED..._ "

Under the Cloak, Harry covered his ears as Mrs Black launched into her tirade. All of the other portraits in the front hall started complaining loudly of the noise, putting their hands over their painted ears. He'd forgotten about her, as he and Ginny had finally found a way to remove the portrait from the house, though they seldom went there. Remus and Tonks lived there, paying Harry a Galleon per year. Getting the portrait of Mrs Black out of the place—because Tonks found her complaining about her half-breed great-niece marrying another sort of half-breed more than a little tiresome—had involved removing the portion of wall to which the portrait was attached. However, Remus and Tonks had decided that having two entrances to the drawing room wasn't a bad idea. Much better than still having Mrs. Black's screaming constantly serenading them.

It was strange to think that all of that wouldn't occur for over ten years. When the single existing door to the drawing room had opened quite suddenly, Harry carefully backed up against the wall, seeing his two best friends as teenagers again. Hermione looked around, frowning, clearly trying very hard to ignore the various anti-Muggle-born epithets Mrs Black was screeching. "Are you _sure_ you heard—?" Ron eyed everything around him suspiciously.

"Yes! The front door opened and closed again and then the locks were clicking—" Ron's face was turning quite red. Suddenly he stopped, as if he'd had a revelation. He looked at Hermione in horror. The same horror showed on her face.

"Maybe it wasn't someone coming in," Hermione whispered. "Maybe—maybe it was someone—"

"—someone going out," Ron said, nodding. He lunged at the handle to the front door, but it was magically locked again and Ron didn't know how to reverse it. Hermione shook her head in exasperation.

"Don't be rash. We should check the house first. Then if we think she's run off we'll tell someone. Kitchen first, I think."

Mrs Black's voice continued to echo through the entrance hall. Harry's head was pounding along with his heart so loudly that he started to fear that Ron would hear both under the Invisibility Cloak. He pressed himself into the corner behind the door as thoroughly as he could. However, Ron seemed able to ignore this and the racket coming from the artwork as he turned and ran down the hall toward the kitchen.

"Ginny! Ginny!" As he passed Mrs Black she stopped shouting and the other portraits settled down as well. He parted the curtains briefly, saying to Sirius's mother, "What's the matter?" he asked snidely. "Worried that I'll kiss you again?"

Harry fought the urge to laugh, not having the foggiest idea what Ron was talking about. Ron left the portrait and started to open the door to the kitchen stairs when Ginny flung it open, her hair in a wild cloud around her head. Harry's heart turned over when he saw her. She was so beautiful and unaffected as she approached her fifteenth birthday, no idea how pretty she was. He wished he'd noticed her sooner, he wished he'd _seen_ her. But years had passed without his thinking of her at all. It was strange to be able to see her now, so young, through eyes of love. Her gaze narrowed when she saw Ron.

"What? What is it? Is there some news?"

#/#/#

 **Please be a responsible reader and review.**

#/#/#

Listen to **Quantum Harry, the Podcast,** available on iTunes, Stitcher and on the **Quantum Harry** YouTube channel. Subscribe today!

You can also follow me on Twitter **QHPodcast** and/or Instagram **bl_purdom**.


	61. Future Post

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Sixty-One**

 **Future Post**

 **#/#/#**

Harry continued to huddle under the Invisibility Cloak in the corner of the front hall at number twelve, Grimmauld Place. He didn't think he would be seen by his future wife or his friends, but he didn't want to take chances. He certainly didn't want to have to perform memory charms on them.

"What? What is it? Is there some news?" Ginny said with urgency. Ron suddenly flung his arms around her, but Ginny shook him off impatiently. "What's the matter with you?" she grumbled.

Ron let her push him away. "It's just—thought—"

Ginny looked at Hermione. "We thought you'd left the house, Ginny. To—to go to Surrey," Hermione said quietly.

"I _knew_ you weren't _really_ over Harry, Ginny. Dean Thomas! I ask you!" Ron said indignantly.

Ginny looked daggers at him. "Stop trying to throw Harry at me, Ron. I came running up here because I'm concerned about him as a _friend_. Not to mention I'm concerned about everyone in the Order who went, and Professor Dumbledore as well. And while you're at it, stop talking about Dean that way!"

"You were very anxious there for a minute, asking for news of someone you think of as only a _friend_ …" Ron said, raising his eyebrows meaningfully, ignoring what she'd said about the Order and Dumbledore. "Not to mention I think you _would_ have gone to Surrey if you thought you could help."

Ginny crossed her arms and glared at him. "How stupid do you think I am? It would be like the Ministry of Magic all over again, wouldn't it? As it is the Order has Harry's safety to worry about. They don't need the likes of me running around Surrey attracting trouble. And how would I get there without doing magic or risking being seen flying a broom?"

"The Knight Bus," Hermione and Ron said automatically, in unison, and both coloured immediately. Ginny didn't look so stern when she heard this.

"You thought I'd gone because you'd considered it yourselves, hadn't you?" She looked sympathetically at them. Harry was very glad they hadn't done anything risky like going to Surrey. It was bad enough that he'd taken them and Neville and Luna to the Ministry and nearly got them all killed.

Hermione nodded. "Yes, but it was just talk. We needed to spout rubbish about what we'd do if we were going. The Knight Bus seemed the most logical way."

"Why did you think I'd gone out, again?" Ginny said, frowning. Harry shook with nerves when all three of them turned again toward the front door. It seemed like they were looking _right at him_. He started inching toward the stairs.

"Well, we thought we heard someone open and close the front door. And Mrs Black went off again. I suppose it could have been something else. Could have been anything. We're a bit tense and jumpy," Hermione conceded. Ginny smiled wickedly at them.

"You need to relax. A little snogging might be in order," she said mischievously.

Hermione turned deep red. Harry found it very hard not to laugh at Ron's hopeful face. He wished he could say, _Yes, go ahead, do that and more, then you won't both wonder about it and be tempted to cheat when you're with other people someday…_

But that reminded him of why he'd come. _Cheating. I cheated on Ginny._ He looked at the light falling on her beautiful hair, at the defiant sparkle in her dark eyes. He didn't deserve her. Perhaps he never had. He thought about writing a letter to himself to warn himself not to marry, so he would never have to cause a wife the pain of his infidelity. But then he thought of the years he and Ginny had shared and would share, he thought of Ruby and Rory and Charlotte, he thought of living at St Clare's, waking up with his beautiful wife in his arms and having the twins bounce into their bedroom on a summer morning. They had a good life. A life he suddenly didn't feel he deserved. But a life he could not negate.

Instead of Ron and Hermione going off to snog, the three of them went to the kitchen. Harry crept carefully up the stairs, glad they were gone. It was entirely too painful to see them so young and relatively untouched by the war. What had happened in the Department of Ministries was nothing compared to what they'd eventually go through.

Harry quickly reached the room Hermione and Ginny shared, with its portrait of the other Mrs Black and her son hanging over the mantle. He knew that magical portraits couldn't see through Invisibility Cloaks, so there would be no danger of her giving away his presence. Fortunately, both mother and child were sleeping, gentle snores emanating from the canvas.

He went to Ginny's dresser and opened the second drawer from the bottom. When he failed to find the portfolio of drawings there he checked the bottom drawer. He brought it under the Cloak with him, opening the ribbon carefully and leafing through the beautifully executed sketches, his heart aching again at the sight of his wife as a young girl, before he'd betrayed her trust, before he'd made her a public laughingstock.

He found the drawing of her on the bed, the one that really set Ron off. He quickly turned the end of his wand into a pen and wrote, _My dearest Ginny,_ on the back of the drawing. As he wrote he thought of their life together, and their daughters. He thought of how much he loved her, of the years they'd worked side by side, and the way she'd looked before she'd gone into Parvati's shop to wait for him to go back to his sixteenth birthday and cheat on her. _I'm so sorry, Ginny. I can never say how much._

The words poured out of him. When he'd filled about two-thirds of the page a quick check of his watch told him that he should return to Little Whinging. It would only take Tilda and young Harry an hour, if that, to make the drive from Brighton, though making the drive _to_ Brighton while on the floor in the back seat made it seem much longer.

He retied the ribbon on the portfolio and placed it carefully in the second drawer from the bottom, closing the drawer as quietly as he could. Mrs Black awoke and saw the drawer moving but no one in the room.

"Who is there?" she said suspiciously. Harry was glad that this Mrs Black's usual mode of speaking was _not_ in anti-Muggle rants at the top of her lungs. He didn't answer but crept quietly to the door, ignoring Mrs Black again when he opened the door and she repeated, " _Who is there_?"

 _Who indeed?_ Harry thought. _Only a man, a fallible, average man._

He managed to leave the house again without anyone being the wiser, since everyone who was home seemed to be in the kitchen. Standing in the park across from the house again, he lifted his wand and Apparated to Little Whinging.

#/#/#

Harry very purposefully did _not_ Apparate to Tilda's house. He went instead to number four, Privet Drive. As he tucked the Cloak into his rucksack he saw his reflection in a window, surprised that he still had the thick moustache on his upper lip, the large nose, and the floppy brown hair hiding his scar. He'd forgotten that he'd imitated his lunch companion's appearance, his mental image of himself still being the Harry with unruly black hair and the visible lightning bolt scar. Ducking quickly behind some shrubbery, he changed his hair to a lighter brown and removed the moustache but retained the large nose before Transfiguring a small stone into a black puppy with a long lead.

When he emerged from the shrubbery he went to the pavement with the puppy, for all the world like a typical resident of the quiet suburb of Little Whinging strolling along in the summer evening with his pet. He knew that Mad-Eye was waiting at Mrs Figg's, and that if someone walked by in an Invisibility Cloak, Moody would be on alert right away. Harry's only option was to hide in plain sight. Moody's magical eye was good, but it couldn't detect the real form of a Metamorphmagus or a puppy that had been created through Transfiguration. The puppy would look like a puppy to Moody and Harry would look like a thirtyish man with a large nose and short, straight, light-brown hair, with a fringe covering his brow.

He planned to put on the Cloak later to help in the fight against Voldemort and the Death Eaters, but by then he hoped that Moody would be too distracted by everything else going on to notice _him_. And even if he did notice, he planned to revert to his usual appearance after donning his Cloak again, so that this might help Moody realise quickly which side he was on.

The most difficult thing was to continue to walk behind the puppy as if he hadn't a care in the world. He held his wand in the same hand as the lead, where it was easily camouflaged. He wanted to be able to use it at a moment's notice. When he was finally walking past the houses across from Tilda's and Mrs Figg's, he stopped the puppy and stood behind him, facing the two houses while (supposedly) waiting for the dog to urinate or defecate. The little thing yapped at him, however, and pulled at the lead, forcing him to turn away from his target and move farther down the street, as he continued to watch the two houses out of the corner of his eye.

No one was in front of either house. Mrs Figg's place looked just as uninhabited as Tilda's. His heart beat fitfully in his chest, waiting, waiting… After standing with the puppy at the end of the street for a few minutes he slowly turned and started walking back, trying to concentrate on doing a better job of controlling the behaviour of the Transfigured stone animal this time.

After three circuits he couldn't help checking his watch every few moments. He wished he'd checked his watch when he was young so he knew _exactly_ what time everything had happened. He probably could have used a Pensieve to check, if he'd thought of that first. Which he hadn't. He remembered what had happened when they'd arrived at Tilda's house, his shock at seeing her stunned, getting out of the car and whipping off his Invisibility Cloak…

Then he froze, remembering what had happened when Voldemort had seen a man across the street from Tilda's house _walking his dog_. He felt like he couldn't breathe for a moment.

 _No, no... That can't be it…_

He swallowed and looked at the puppy. He hadn't had much time to look at the man Voldemort had killed before he'd leaped into the battle. If the man had straight light-brown hair and a large nose Harry didn't remember. This was, again, where looking at the events of this night in a Pensieve could have proven useful. He could have examined everything in minute detail. Instead he had only his memories, thrown into high relief when the other half of his life lay forgotten, thanks to Parvati's memory charm. However, now that it had worn off, the rest of his life, sixteen more years of events, was crowding his brain, making his memories of being sixteen recede into the distant past with the rest of his long-departed youth.

 _Bloody hell. I didn't just come back to father a son._

 _I came back to die._

Somehow a part of him didn't want to believe this; it just _couldn't_ be. That would be so wrong, so dreadful, the idea of never seeing Ginny and his children again, that it wasn't even worth contemplating. But another thought was surfacing: _Now that I know that that man was me in disguise I can save myself._

Technically, it _would_ be changing the timeline, something he was specifically trying to avoid, but what would really be changed by his not dying in the guise of a Muggle walking his dog? It wouldn't affect the battle, what he remembered of it. He hesitated, however, as he tried to remember _exactly_ how he'd felt at sixteen when he'd turned to see the man across the street lying so still. Had seeing that done something to him, affected the way he'd responded in battle? What if he was condemning his _younger_ self by trying to avoid death? If that was the case then he would wink out of existence the moment his younger self was killed by Voldemort.

Harry crouched, petting the puppy and thinking, wiping nervous perspiration from his brow. He remembered how Dumbledore had thwarted Voldemort at the Ministry by having Fawkes take the brunt of the Killing Curse. Harry didn't have a phoenix to help him, however. _There has to be a way, there has to be a way_ …

His hand froze in the act of petting the puppy, who continued to fidget and squirm. Harry was in general pleased with his Transfiguration abilities, which had improved in recent years thanks to some tips from and friendly competition with Theo Nott. The puppy was quite realistic and even had a warm flank and subtly variegated coat. In his one and only year of Auror training, Transfiguration had been very important, as much as his Metamorphmagus ability, and he was justifiably prouder of this, as he'd had to work hard to learn it.

He thought that he _might_ have a plan. His life depended upon it—both of his lives. He remained crouched beside the puppy, petting it repeatedly, as he worked out exactly what he was going to do. It could work, it really could, and chances were that he'd already _done_ it, for there were many, many things he remembered from the battle that couldn't be explained otherwise, as he'd already told Tilda.

He stood and brushed his fringe over the scar again, swallowing with apprehension. A moment later he heard the distinctive sound of a car approaching. Not a single car had passed while he'd been going back and forth with the dog. He had thought he'd seen a car like Tilda's on the way from Privet Drive, but he had looked too late to confirm whether it was her. Now he resisted the urge to stop and stare at the approaching car. It _had_ to be Tilda and his younger self.

Sure enough, when he turned to pretend to watch the puppy dither over whether to produce anything, Tilda's car stopped in front of her house. The motor idled while she opened the garage door, but before she returned to the car the members of the Order appeared on Mrs Figg's lawn; crackling light from Remus Lupin's wand hit her and she crumpled to the ground, stunned. Harry's heart was beating very fast. His plan could work, but he had to time everything _exactly_ , down to the millisecond.

The car's passenger door seemed to open by itself. His younger self whipped off the Invisibility Cloak and cried, "What did you do that for? I was going to turn myself in tonight!"

No one noticed the older Harry, appearing to be a typical Muggle walking his dog. Perhaps they thought he could be memory-charmed afterwards, or maybe the Muggle-repelling charms on Mrs Figg's property meant that a real Muggle wouldn't be able to see what was going on.

Remus frowned at young Harry. "I'm trying to—"

" _Aaaaargh!_ "

One of the wizards with Remus went down after a bolt of red light hit him. Harry recognised him as Dawlish, an Auror Fudge had brought to try to arrest Dumbledore. Suddenly and soundlessly the enemy had appeared in Mrs Figg's garden. Voldemort stood in their midst, tallest of them all, surrounded by a dozen Death Eaters. One wore no mask: Severus Snape.

Harry pointed his wand at the 'puppy', preparing to cast the spell silently, concentrating as hard as he could. He was ready. It wouldn't be long. He tensed up, waiting for what he knew was coming:

 _There_.

Voldemort looked at him, across the quiet street.

Before the bolt of green light reached him, he'd cast two wordless spells. When the smoke cleared, the people across the street could see a man lying on the pavement who looked like the Muggle who'd been walking the puppy. But there was no puppy to be seen.

And the man appeared to be dead.

#/#/#

Harry didn't know when he'd had such a good time. No one seemed the least bit suspicious that he might be far older than thirty-two. He splashed about in the pool he and Ginny had installed near the terrace behind the house. He dried off and helped Ron and Neville grill sausages and chops and kebabs, he let the smaller children climb all over him and gave them frequent rides on his back as he crawled on all fours. It seemed that all the people he most cared about were present, except—

"Where's Parvati?" Ginny asked, suddenly appearing at his elbow while he and Ron debated whether the chicken kebabs were thoroughly seasoned. "I'm quite certain she responded to say that she'd come, but she isn't here yet."

Harry froze, not having a good response to this. "She must have been held up by something. I'll send her an owl, see what the problem might be."

Ginny nodded, satisfied, and took his place in disagreeing with Ron over the chicken kebabs. Harry entered the house and climbed the winding stairs in the chapel's old bell-tower, which was their owlery. He wrinkled his nose against the smell of dead prey Hedwig had killed and eaten in her aerie, and against the owl guano. He had a bad feeling that he was supposed to be the last one to have cleaned out the mess and he'd neglected to do so.

He took a piece of parchment from the lap desk they kept in the tower and dipped a quill in the nearby inkwell that was charmed to stay fresh and full.

 _Dear Parvati,_

 _We're having the party as planned. Can you still come? Ginny and everyone else think I'm thirty-two. I don't think she's thinking about me going back to my sixteenth birthday much at all. I told her I was split in half and sort of 'copied' when I cast the Birthday Wish spell, so she thinks I'm both here and in 1996. Which I am, of course. So go along with that when you come if she mentions it, okay?_

 _Everyone's having a brilliant time. Hope you can make it._

 _Harry_

He wasn't sure what Parvati would think of his impersonating his younger self at the party, rather than just in the middle of the night to keep his son from suspecting anything was awry. He thought it best to forewarn her so she didn't put her foot in it if Ginny talked to her about the Birthday Wish spell. After he sent Hedwig off with the message, he cast some cleaning spells to rid the owlery of its odour—Hedwig didn't like him cleaning while she was in it—and started to return to the party, pausing before opening the door to return to the garden. Instead he went up to his and Ginny's bedroom.

 _Where did she say it was?_ he thought, sending his mind back thirty-two years. _Ah, right, the top shelf._ He opened Ginny's wardrobe and took down some hat boxes, feeling about on the shelf for what he sought. He finally found it, pushed all the way back. When he brought it down, he sneezed for a moment before blowing dust off it and sneezing again.

It was the portfolio of drawings by Dean. Ginny clearly hadn't looked at it in years. He wasn't sure what made him think of it, but it seemed like the perfect way to do this. He sat on the bed and untied the ribbon, opening it carefully. The papers inside were yellowed with age. Harry browsed through the drawings, smiling at how young Ginny was in them, until he found his favourite one and turned it over to write his message. To his surprise, he saw his own familiar handwriting—he'd already written a note to Ginny on this same drawing when he was thirty-two and time-travelling! He shook his head; he didn't remember doing it, thanks to the memory-charm that wiped out his memory of sleeping with Tilda. _When did I go to Grimmauld place?_ But then he remembered returning to headquarters as a sixteen-year-old, after the battle, and learning that Ron, Hermione and Ginny had been searching the house for an intruder, assuming that it was Kreacher. _That was probably me!_ he thought.

There was still space at the bottom of the page so he turned his wand into a pen and wrote another, shorter letter, whispering the words to himself with a small smile before tying the ribbon again. He started to put it back on the shelf, and was even prepared to magically restore the layer of dust, but a sudden impulse made him stop and tuck it under Ginny's pillow. With another wand-wave, the hatboxes flew back to their places and he closed the wardrobe doors. He didn't have a memory of being with Ginny when she found the portfolio, but if she'd told him about reading it he would have known far sooner that he was going to travel back in time on his sixty-fourth birthday, so he decided not to worry about that. He felt certain that she would read it either later that night or the next morning. She was the one who made up the bed every morning and she couldn't fail to find it then, if she hadn't before that.

Harry tried to stop grinning, thinking of her finding the drawings the next day and reading the two messages from him. But then he froze, thinking about what else the first of August would bring. Suddenly he _felt_ like an old man as he sank to the bed again, holding onto one of the bedposts to steady himself. _Oh, no,_ he thought. _Tomorrow is when it all starts. Once again, years and years of chaos and uncertainty. And everyone thought that when Zabini's dad was defeated by giving his power to Teddy everything would be fine again, no one else trying to be a Dark Lord, no more violence and upheaval…_

He wasn't sure how long he had sat there, suddenly paralysed by grief and despair as he considered the many lives that would be adversely affected by the events of the next twenty-four hours. He was startled when a voice spoke to him, as if out of nowhere.

"All right, Harry? Is this where you've been? Ginny said you were sending an owl to Parvati, but I checked the tower and you weren't up there."

It had to be _Neville_ , of all people. Neville who had never hurt a single person during his years as an Auror, Neville who had fought by his side against Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Seeing his old friend made it harder to forget what would happen to him very, very soon.

Neville wore a blue, white and green Hawai'ian print shirt featuring a lot of palm trees and surfers, red-and-black-striped Bermuda shorts, turquoise gardening clogs and purple argyle socks. He seemed to have been dressed by Arthur Weasley in the days when Arthur wasn't completely certain that Muggles didn't wear kilts and ponchos at the same time. Somehow, despite the completely ridiculous outfit, seeing Neville just after thinking about what was coming caused Harry to tear up, he couldn't help it. Neville peered at him with concern.

"Erm, are you all right, Harry? You look like—"

"Ha ha HA!" Harry laughed loudly suddenly, forcing it as hard as he could so that he could claim that the tears were from laughing. "Have you seen what you look like, Neville? Did Hermione actually approve that ensemble?"

Neville looked down, clearly hurt. "I like it," he said. "That's what I told Hermione, too, when she asked me if I was quite certain I wanted to go out 'like that,' as she said."

Harry wiped his eyes and grimaced. "Sorry, mate. I couldn't not give you a hard time." He pictured the other Aurors, Neville's comrades-in-arms, marching behind his coffin as Hermione carried little Frances in her arms, her head held high and her eyes red with tears…

He shook himself, ridding his head of this image while Neville grinned. "Ha! You fell for it, same as her. I'll tell you what I told Hermione: today's a day for relaxing with my mates, wishing you a happy birthday, and not worrying a jot about what I'm wearing. I was working in the garden before we came, as you can probably tell by my bum," he said, turning around so that Harry could see the grass stains on the seat of the shorts. "I told her that that wouldn't matter to _you_ and you're the Birthday Boy, so that was all that mattered. It helps that we just did my birthday yesterday."

Harry nodded, plastering a smile on his face again, trying not to tear up once more. "Oh, right, Neville, happy birthday to you, too! Of course it doesn't matter to me what you wear. You did bring some small balls to juggle, though, yeah? And an orange wig and some large shoes. Though I did tell Ginny that I'm a bit old to have a clown at my birthday party…"

Neville burst out laughing and suddenly conjured up a round red ball for his nose and made the gardening clogs stretch out to look like clown shoes. "How's that, then? Good enough for you?"

Harry laughed in earnest now, but as he followed Neville back outside he couldn't help sobering, thinking about the dark days to come for everyone in the wizarding world. _Today is the last good day,_ he thought, wondering if anyone realised, before the rise of Voldemort, that there was a particular day that was the last good, calm, safe day before it all went to hell. He knew that everyone thought of the Hallowe'en when his parents had died as the last _bad_ day before they were rid of Voldemort for thirteen years, but he certainly hadn't thought of the days—or even months—before the final task of the Triwizard Tournament as blissfully Voldemort-free because he hadn't been Voldemort-free since he'd first entered Hogwarts and had felt his scar hurting during the Welcome Feast.

He felt as though he were observing the party from afar, disconnected from this time. He tried to think of what started it all, what led to the darkness…

 _They'd been waiting in the marquee for what seemed a very long time. There was still no Draco to be found. The clerk from the Ministry registry office seemed to be checking his watch every thirty seconds and Harry had heard him say loudly to the maid-of-honour, "You know, I do have another wedding at five o'clock." Several times Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy's older brother and the real Blaise Zabini, Junior walked in and out of the large space where guests were lined up on their folding chairs, waiting for the wedding to begin. All four groomsmen appeared quite agitated and were sometimes seen at the back conferring with equally agitated-looking bridesmaids, who were all variations on Pansy, with their pug-nosed faces, so Harry guessed that they were cousins._

" _You don't think he's—" Harry started to say to Ron, on his left._

"— _done a runner? Dunno," Ron answered. "Wish you'd've come to the stag party after all, though. Malfoy's a miserable drunk. Gets maudlin. Wanted me to reassure him that marriage is the most wonderful thing ever."_

 _Harry eyed Luna, on Ron's other side. She stared attentively at the blank underside of the uniformly white marquee as if a film were being projected onto it. Their kids—like Harry's and Ginny's—were at the Burrow, in Molly and Arthur's care. "What did you tell him?"_

" _Well, you know." Ron reddened and also glanced at Luna, then back at Harry. "I said it's fine."_

" _Fine? Fine?" Harry tried to keep his voice to a whisper, but it was difficult. "That's all? Fine?"_

" _Are you blaming this on me?"_

But Harry had indeed blamed a lot of what happened on Ron, for years to come. It wasn't fair, he reflected now. It wasn't Ron's fault, in all likelihood. After all, Draco Malfoy had shown a remarkable tendency, when they were in school, to automatically disagree with Ron on any point you could name. If Ron had said the sky was blue, Draco would have argued that it was green. If Ron wasn't praising marriage to the skies, Draco's normal response would be to row with Ron for not understanding that it was the single most noble institution in the history of the world.

Harry wished he could have those years of their friendship back. And the things he'd said to him at Ginny's funeral, when Ron was also grieving—that was inexcusable. _How could I have done that?_ he thought. Any number of things could have prompted Draco to think that he should leave Pansy at the altar. He must already have been having doubts before the stag party. It certainly wasn't Ron's fault that Pansy responded to being jilted the way that she had.

Harry had so many regrets about the way he'd behaved toward Ron, about what later happened to Luna… He wished that he dared tell any of them what the future would bring, warn them, tell them something that would let them change things for the better, but he knew he shouldn't. He'd managed to go into the past when he was thirty-two and, as far as he knew, not change the timeline. He'd preserved it. He had to maintain the timeline he knew from when he was sixty-four as well.

Or— _did_ he?

#/#/#

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#/#/#

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	62. The Battle Redux

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Sixty-Two**

 **The Battle Redux**

 **#/#/#**

Harry straightened up and looked around. He had successfully Apparated to his bedroom on Privet Drive a split second after transfiguring the rock that had been a puppy into a simulacrum of a full-grown man who looked exactly as he had, with the large Snape-ish nose and straight light-brown hair flopping over his brow. He guessed that the ersatz man wouldn't have had more than a few moments of being balanced upright before Voldemort's curse struck, so it wouldn't matter that he wasn't designed to stay on his feet.

Harry returned to his usual appearance, feeling that he'd had quite enough of looking like other people. He put his Invisibility Cloak on again, lifting his wand to Apparate back to the battle. He landed in the thick of it, in Tilda's front garden. He spotted Tilda immediately, stunned, lying prostrate before the garage. He quickly transfigured her into a rock and summoned it silently. A split second after he'd done so the spot where she'd been lying was blasted by a Death Eater and was now a smoking crater. Creeping along as quietly as he could, holding the rock under his Cloak, he moved it inconspicuously to a spot beside the front door, under a shrub, before pointing his wand at the Death Eater and wordlessly stunning him. _One down…_

" _Expelliarmus!_ " Dumbledore roared. Harry jumped in surprise. He'd forgotten how the crackling light from the headmaster's wand had splintered into separate strands so that the wands belonging to the Death Eaters—including the Death Eater Harry had stunned—flew into the air; the Death Eaters all fell to the ground, including Severus Snape. Voldemort laughed, making Harry sink to his knees, holding his head with both hands. He'd forgotten that Voldemort would probably still have this effect on him, not having experienced his scar hurting since defeating Voldemort when he was seventeen. He remembered feeling tempted to laugh, to be _controlled_ by Voldemort when he was young, and had to concentrate very hard to resist the same temptation now. When the feeling abruptly left him he looked up to find Voldemort _smirking_ at his headmaster.

"As usual, Dumbledore, your pedestrian methods fail to anticipate me." He turned to sixteen-year-old Harry. "I know your weakness now, Potter. You may _think_ you have something I do not, but fear trumps everything, and _I_ have at my disposal something you _fear_ , the thing you fear _most_." He raised his wand and a flash of light emanated from it like a beacon.

The street went dark, all of the lamps winking out simultaneously. Wind whipped the tree branches, as if blowing from all directions at once. Sticks, leaves and rubbish flew about, and young Harry put his left hand over the top of his glasses. Were it not for the Invisibility Cloak, which he was at pains to keep from blowing away, he'd have had to do the same.

Then—there it was. That sound. Like a death-rattle magnified a hundred, a thousand times.

The wind settled a little and everyone—Dumbledore, the Order, Voldemort, the Death Eaters, and _two_ Harry Potters—looked expectantly at the starless sky.

#/#/#

Parvati suddenly appeared in the graveyard, holding a printed cotton parasol over her head. "Parvati's here, Ginny. I'll go greet her," Harry said quickly, to forestall Ginny saying anything about it. She was still eyeing the grilled food that Ron was turning out with what appeared to be deep suspicion.

"What? Oh, good, yes…"

He ran through the overgrown grass toward Parvati, who looked cross and overheated. When he reached her the glare she gave him made him feel slightly abashed.

"Why is it," she said without preamble, "that when I send you back to your sixteenth birthday you are only permitted to talk to _one person_ , but when you come back here from your sixty-fourth birthday you're allowed to throw a bloody _party_?"

"Sssshhh!" Harry said quickly, taking a wicker basket from her that held two bottles of wine. "Thanks for this," he said, pointing at the wine. "But you _know_ that's different. For one thing, I looked very different when I was sixteen compared to when I was thirty-two. Not a soul here has worked out that I'm not me. I mean, thirty-two-year-old me. No one has a clue, including Ginny. And the party was already planned. More trouble to cancel it. No sticky questions about what I was getting up to on my birthday."

She frowned and looked at the underside of the printed parasol, which seemed to be made of the same gold-trimmed purple-flowered fabric as the sari wrapped around her body. "So you're saying that you _want_ people to think you really did father Teddy on your sixteenth birthday and that Tilda, well, that she—"

"Tilda's adjusted to—well, all of it. I'm fairly certain. When she and Severus get back from the Isle of Wight I can ask her if she'd prefer that I say publicly what actually happened, but she might not be any keener to be known as the woman who got Harry Potter to cheat on his wife, even if I did have a memory charm on me at the time. Not to mention Ginny might not be very keen on that either."

He felt his face grow hot as he thought of the way he and Ginny had spent the hours before dawn, and just following it, after he'd left sixty-four-year-old Parvati to go back in time half his lifetime. He was cheating once more, technically, but he had a feeling that the reason that Parvati had always said that she didn't want to marry him was that she _knew_ this was going to happen and didn't want him to go through the pain of cheating on a wife again, even if it was _with_ his wife.

She frowned again. They'd reached the house and Harry waved to Ginny, standing near the grill with Ron, before ushering Parvati into the entryway as she looked over her shoulder. "Why can't I join the party? What—"

"I need to talk to you in private. I have to tell you some things about the future and get an opinion."

"An opinion? An opinion on what, precisely?" She took down the parasol and sighed at the coolness of the high-ceilinged drawing room. He led her to the kitchen and sat at the table, gesturing for her to do the same. After going to the fridge and pouring two glasses of pumpkin juice he began to explain.

"You see—I'm not completely certain that I'm here this time to _maintain_ the timeline so much as to _fix_ it," he said quickly, before he lost his nerve. She stared at him.

" _Fix it?_ Are you mad?" she said, stopping in the act of sipping her juice.

Harry shook his head, staring at the table. "No, I'm not. Anything but. In fact, I think it would be madness _not_ to change it. You've no idea."

"Harry," she said, her voice sounding as dire as Hermione's when she was warning him about doing something dodgy or dangerous. "Messing about with time isn't a game, you need to—"

"Neville's going to be _killed_ tomorrow, Parvati," he said quickly. "And others. At Draco and Pansy's wedding. Or rather, what _should_ have been their wedding. Draco leaving her…it sends Pansy over the edge after she's waited all these years for him. She snaps. And she asks her cousins, her bridesmaids, to support her. Three of the four do; she kills the other one. She kills Draco, too. And over time, she acquires more followers, all witches, calling themselves her Harpies, wearing bird masks wherever they go, wherever they torture and kill. The Quidditch team even changed—will change—their name. Bad association. They'll go by 'Holyhead United' instead. Pansy will be fuelled by grief and pain and she will give no quarter. She will want everyone else to be as miserable as she is."

 _And she'll eventually kill Ginny on our son's eighteenth birthday._ He hoped that Parvati wouldn't correctly surmise that there were people even closer to him than Neville whom he hoped to save. _And poor Brian will blame himself for his mother's death, since Pansy was trying to kill him and Ginny stepped between him and the curse._ Harry closed his eyes, seeing their son, his red hair the same colour as his mother's, his hazel eyes clear and bright, his nose scattered with freckles but his eyesight as poor as his father's, requiring spectacles. Harry remembered him laughing and merry before his mother's death, but a mere shell afterward…

"Harry, I thought you were trying to be inconspicuous about not being thirty-two? If you go out there and tell everyone not to go to Draco and Pansy's wedding so they don't get killed—"

"No, no, I thought _you_ could do it," he said quickly, trying to smile ingratiatingly. She goggled at him.

"Me?"

"Yes! You're a Seer." She looked doubtfully at him and he nodded. "Trust me, you _are_. Anyway, if you go out there and tell them that you've foreseen a disaster at the wedding—"

Parvati shook her head. "Hermione will die _today_ if I do that. She'll die of _laughter_. All right, suppose _anyone_ believes me. How will that keep Pansy from becoming The Bride from Hell? Or She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? That just means that some of the people who are supposed to die tomorrow won't, but other people might instead. And I don't see how that's going to keep Draco from leaving her at the—"

"Stag party," Harry murmured, staring into his empty glass, only half-listening to Parvati.

"Pardon?" she asked, her brows raised.

"I—I didn't go to the stag party tonight. I always thought it was because Ginny couldn't be bothered to do the same magic for that as she did to convince people that they remembered seeing me at my birthday party, but it was because I stayed here with her, I think. Just this morning we were talking about whether she really wanted to go to Pansy's hen party tonight, and whether I really wanted to go to Draco's stag party. On the one hand, spending more time with Ginny seems like the best possible way I could spend my birthday, but what if I _do_ go? And what if I convince Draco that marriage is the best thing _ever_?"

Parvati sighed. "Then we'd better pray that you're very, _very_ convincing."

He nodded. "All the more reason not to broadcast to people that I got Tilda pregnant when I was thirty-two, rather than sixteen. And if Ginny goes to the hen party I can talk to her about making sure Pansy realises how much she _loves_ Draco, no matter _what_."

"—just in case he still ditches her?"

Harry grimaced. "Just in case, yeah. Damn! I wish I could be here tomorrow, too, to make sure he goes through with it."

Parvati sighed. "Well, I could tell you to do that. When you get back from Tilda's. So that you, or rather he, erm, the other you, doesn't realise that sixty-four-year-old you travelled back in time, too." Passing her hand over her eyes, she said wearily, "I'll be glad when I can stop speaking of you in the plural."

Harry laughed. "Me too. But—don't you see? This could be a very, _very_ good thing! If someone could have pinpointed the day, the very _hour_ that Voldemort decided he was going to be a Dark Wizard, don't you think they'd have given their right arm to be able to prevent it? We can _do_ this, Parvati. We can change the world for the better."

She scrutinised him carefully. "But what if it's not, Harry? What if it's _not_ better? What if Pansy still goes off half-cocked tomorrow but it's _you_ she kills, instead of Neville? What then?"

Harry thought for a moment. "Then…time paradox. I never become sixty-four, I never go back in time to tell you to tell me about the Birthday Wish spell, then I never go back in time to see Tilda, Teddy isn't born, and a whole new timeline is created. Which is to say, if I fail, I'll never know. And neither will you, because we will never have had this conversation."

She shook her head, looking rather dizzy. "If you say so. I was asking a rhetorical question, by the way. No answers concerning time paradoxes were necessary. _Especially_ answers concerning time paradoxes," she added. "So—Ginny didn't think she'd have you for your birthday, but you're here after all. How will you convince her to go to the hen party while you go to the stag party? I doubt she'll want to give you up for a moment."

"Absolutely right," Ginny said, grinning as she entered the kitchen, carrying two plates with chicken kebabs and salad. "Here you go; I didn't know whether you were both hungry or not, since you weren't outside with the others." She seemed a little nervous, as if the plates of food were just an excuse for interrupting them. Harry had the good grace to look sheepishly at her.

"Listen, Ginny, we've had all day, and the party is brilliant, but we _were_ both invited to Pansy's and Draco's parties later. We should probably go."

Ginny's mouth twisted. "I _suppose_ we should."

"And while you're at it, can you emphasise to Pansy how important the virtue of _forgiveness_ is in a marriage?" he said hopefully, giving her a small smile.

Ginny put her hands on her hips. "Forgiveness, eh?" She raised one brow and her smile spread to her whole face. "Okay, okay. I'll tell her. As long as _you_ tell Draco how lovely married life is."

Harry sprang up and hugged Ginny tightly. "Oh, believe me, I will." He pressed his mouth against her neck and she started to sigh with bliss. Parvati cleared her throat.

"I'll just take my plate outside. The kebabs look fantastic."

Harry and Ginny didn't answer her. He was just glad that Parvati managed to get out of the house before Ginny pulled him onto the kitchen table and banished his clothes.

#/#/#

Harry's heart leapt into his throat as he squinted through the Cloak to see what he knew was coming: Dementors. Soon the air above was simply swarming with them, despair incarnate. It had been years since Harry had been near Dementors. He had different worst-moments now. He also had had far more happiness than his sixteen-year-old self, which he felt the Dementors pulling on, trying to take it from him.

They were close enough that they were affecting him, but they were focussing on his younger self, though he knew that Dementors didn't care about Invisibility Cloaks. He could see the boy struggling to stand again after going to his knees, pulling himself up by the handle on the car door, his eyes unfocussed and vacant.

Harry tried not to hear the voices in his head, but he couldn't help reliving the horrible day that the children had disappeared…

" _Where's your dad? And Bill and Percy? And the kids?"_

" _The garage?"_

" _Your dad and Bill and Percy are here, but the kids aren't!"_

" _Wait a minute, Harry! You know how you told me about that prank the twins sometimes pull? Making it look like they're gone, when they're just hiding? Think they did something like that?"_

" _I reckon it's possible. They must have done something to knock out the adults, but I can't work out what it is. They're not stunned; I tried using the standard revival spell. They're okay, breathing and all, but..."_

" _Wait a minute, Harry. The clock!"_

Suddenly, Mad-Eye Moody sent a spell hurtling at Voldemort, who deflected it. This, however, seemed to give young Harry the strength to stand again, blindly pointing his wand. Moody was not fighting Voldemort effortlessly. The familiar green flash was flying at him but he Disapparated in time, reappearing behind Voldemort, looking exhausted. They repeated this time and again. Voldemort appeared to be merely annoyed rather than challenged. Harry saw that the boy Harry was concentrating very hard, trying to produce a Patronus, and he was glad that Moody was keeping Voldemort occupied.

Dawlish and Tonks were huddled on the ground as if hearing some very bad things in their heads. McGonagall leaned against a tree, her face screwed up in concentration and pain simultaneously, trembling. Lupin and Dumbledore cried, " _Expecto Patronum!_ " with their wands pointed heavenward. A jolt of pain shot through Harry's scar. When he opened his eyes again he saw silver mist dissipating. They'd succeeded in conjuring Patronuses but it wasn't enough, the Dementors were still coming.

Death Eaters also huddled on the ground in the foetal position, helpless and disarmed by Dumbledore, but Voldemort seemed unconcerned, continuing to duel with Moody. A Dementor hovering over one of the Death Eaters removed the man's mask and took down his hood, releasing a fall of pale blond hair. The creature brought its mouth closer to Lucius Malfoy's, except that Harry knew that it was not Malfoy, it was Mundungus Fletcher. Snape seemed to have grabbed one of the wands that had gone flying, because now he conjured a Patronus, a cloud of smoke that abruptly unfurled into a thick snake, going after both the Dementor trying to kiss "Malfoy" and one leaning over another Death Eater. Harry could see his unmasked face clearly: Rodolphus Lestrange.

Young Harry sank to his knees; Harry felt Voldemort's presence in his mind and knew that the boy felt it, too. Hysterical laughter seemed to be trying to escape from him. He squinted through the Cloak and saw the boy press a hand to his scar as he pointed his wand heavenward. " _Expecto Patronum!_ "

A wisp of white fog drifted lazily from the boy's wand. The laughter grew louder. Harry struggled to block it from his mind, to deflect the alien thoughts, but he felt as incompetent as he did at sixteen. _I'm here to help_ , he thought, trying to focus, panting as though he'd just run a marathon. He could see his younger self kneeling beside the car, still attempting to conjure a Patronus but looking like he was going to black out. Voldemort was still duelling with Moody but seemed able to send out mind-numbing thoughts to Harry—to both Harrys—at the same time, so unchallenged was he.

 _I can do this,_ Harry thought. _I can help him. I have to! I have so many happy thoughts._

He pictured Ginny on their wedding day…holding the twins just after they were born…Ginny telling him that she was expecting another baby…the first time he made Teddy laugh…getting Teddy and all of the children back after Zabini's father kidnapped them…

Harry ran to the car where young Harry was trying to point his wand aloft again. Harry pointed his as well and cried with him, their voices joining:

" _Expecto Patronum_!"

Harry winced and struggled to remain upright as another jolt of pain seared through his scar. Young Harry felt it too, his hand pressed to his head. Another ineffectual white wisp escaped from the boy's wand, but a fully corporeal Patronus leapt through the Cloak, galloping above them, the beautiful silver stag charging and scattering the Dementors.

" _Expecto Patronum_!"

Lupin's Patronus shot toward the Dementors as well, a large ghostly wolf leaping against the sky, accompanying the stag, immediately joined by Dumbledore's Patronus. Harry grinned and saw that the boy was also grinning. He suddenly looked happy enough to finally conjure a proper Patronus himself, and Harry heaved a sigh when he succeeded. He wished it were all over.

The silver phoenix flew circles around the wolf and stag, and between the three strong Patronuses they finally succeeding in scattering the army of Dementors. Voldemort jerked his head up from Moody, disbelief contorting his features. This gave Moody a moment's respite and he looked toward young Harry, his eyes widening in shock. Harry realised, for the first time, that Moody could see him under his Cloak, standing behind the boy. The moment that Moody looked at the thirty-two-year old Harry Potter, Voldemort's curse hit him and he went over with a thud.

"Noooo!" Harry cried with his younger self. The boy scrambled onto the car's bonnet. He heard a _pop!_ and was jolted by _Percy Weasley_ running from behind him. Harry was no longer deluded into thinking that it was Percy's appearance that had doomed poor old Moody. Percy hadn't been there when Moody met his fate, which clearly stemmed from seeing a Harry Potter who was double the age of the teenager before him, concealed by an Invisibility Cloak. His younger self glared at Percy. _It's not his fault, though_ , Harry thought miserably. _It's mine._

Dumbledore shouted at Percy, "Did the Minister send you? How many more are coming?"

"It's no good, sir! She knows! She cursed me and told Fudge I was mad. I was taken to St Mungo's." Percy turned to Snape. "Which means he knows about you, too!" He pointed at Rodolphus Lestrange. "And probably you, as well!"

Harry remembered abruptly that the Death Eater wearing Rodolphus Lestrange's face wasn't a Death Eater at all but his brother-in-law, Bill Weasley, using Polyjuice Potion. Voldemort turned to Snape and "Lestrange", fury contorting his already-inhuman features. Harry quickly transfigured them into two more small rocks, hidden in the shrubs in which Snape and Bill had been standing. Since he knew that the Death Eater who appeared to be Lucius Malfoy was Mundungus Fletcher, which was why Snape was also protecting him with his Patronus, Harry transfigured him as well. Voldemort threw hexes around furiously. The boy jumped to the ground on the street side of the car, pointing his wand at Percy and glaring at him, eyes full of distrust. Harry, however, remembered what was coming next and knew he had to act quickly.

" _Avada_ —" The boy jerked his head up, seeing too late that Voldemort was pointing his wand at _him_.

" _Wingardium Leviosa!_ " Harry cried, pointing his wand through the Cloak at the car. The boy fell back as Tilda's car _rose into the air_.

"— _Kedavra!_ "

The car crackled all over with green light as Voldemort's curse hit it. The levitation spell was effectively halted by the new spell, however, and the car dropped out of the air, landing with a crash. Young Harry scrambled out of the way.

"Put your Invisibility Cloak on, Harry!" he couldn't help bursting out angrily, surprising the boy, who didn't know who had spoken. His younger self ducked behind the car and quickly pulled on his Cloak, as he was told, evidently deciding that it didn't matter who was ordering him around, as the voice _was_ giving him sound advice. Another cry made him look up. Percy was bound, magical ropes holding his arms to his side, his wand still clutched in his fist. A masked Death Eater strode to him while Dumbledore took up Moody's part, duelling with Voldemort again, as they had at the Ministry.

Harry quickly pointed his wand at both Percy and the Death Eater, transfiguring them both before the Death Eater could do anything. Two more rocks sat on the grass. Harry summoned the rock he was certain was Percy so he could get it to safety. He placed it under a different shrub from Tilda's and left the Death Eater's rock where it was.

He was startled when he heard his own young, cracking voice almost right beside him, under the other Invisibility Cloak, whispering, "Tilda?" with a croak in his voice.

Harry wished he could throw off his Cloak and say something to reassure the boy, but suddenly a spell came from just two feet away—he knew it had to be young Harry—stunning a Death Eater going after Tonks and Dawlish. This allowed Lupin to stun a Death Eater who'd somehow got another wand before the man could hit Tonks with the Cruciatus Curse. Not to be outdone by a teenager—even if it _was_ himself—Harry pointed his wand under his Cloak and cried, " _Expelliarmus!_ " The stunned Death Eater's wand flew through the air and landed in front of the garage.

" _Accio wand!_ " McGonagall's voice cried, retrieving the fallen wand. Professor McGonagall pointed her wand at the disarmed, stunned Death Eater, though he was oblivious. "That was Alastor Moody's wand!" she cried, clearly outraged. "And you are _not to touch it!_ "

Two of the disarmed Death Eaters decided to go for her at the same time with their bare hands, but suddenly she was gone; a small tabby cat leaped at the taller Death Eater, who roared as the cat's claws sank into his chest. Tonks, Lupin and Dawlish had successfully subdued the other Death Eaters and were removing their masks. Voldemort turned toward Dumbledore and Harry swiftly created yet another transfigured rock, hidden by the flower patch in which the old man had been standing, so it appeared that Dumbledore had Disapparated.

Harry waved his wand and felt the world slipping away. A moment later it slid into focus again as he Apparated much closer to Voldemort. He closed his eyes, concentrating; his Metamorphmagus abilities included his voice box, and he altered it now, enlarging it.

Not understanding what had just happened to his headmaster, young Harry threw off his Invisibility Cloak, appearing a few feet away from his older self. The boy glared at Voldemort, brandishing his wand in one hand and his Cloak in the other. "Where is he? What did you do with him?" he demanded. Voldemort laughed. Harry bit his tongue to keep from crying out, willing himself to withstand the pain, to _focus_. The boy cried out and held his hand to his scar, sinking to his knees, his eyes closed. Harry took a deep breath, struggling through the pain, and used his new voice, speaking in Parseltongue:

"Tom Riddle!" he cried, both hollow and sibilant. Voldemort turned toward young Harry but didn't look at him. He cast his eyes about madly, looking for the source of the voice. Not wanting Voldemort to home in on his location, Harry Disapparated again, and when he was solid once more, cried, " _I said, Tom Riddle!_ " He'd taken himself to the far side of Mrs Figg's garden, trying to make Voldemort turn around. The stars had reappeared with the departure of the Dementors and street lamps glowed around them. Voldemort's complexion was coming very close to matching the red of his inhuman eyes.

"Show yourself!" Voldemort hissed in Parseltongue. "Who speaks?" He looked to his left, to his right, he turned around, his robes whipping his legs.

 _I didn't realise when I was young that the voice was speaking in Parseltongue_ , Harry thought, before saying as ponderously as he could, " _The time is not yet ripe. Potter is yet a child and you are destined to meet as equals. Do not attempt to thwart fate. You shall meet and you shall battle. But that is for the future._ " Voldemort scrutinised Mrs Figg's garden with far too much interest for Harry's liking, so he Disapparated again, aiming for Tilda's roof. " _Tom Riddle!_ " he hissed after he had planted his feet firmly on the roof tiles, making certain that he would not slide off. " _Begone! You shall confront your enemy when the time is ripe._ "

To young Harry's clear surprise, Voldemort took this very much to heart. "Come!" he cried to his Death Eaters, though many of them were not in any condition to obey. He didn't seem to care. When Voldemort suddenly Disapparated, only two of his Death Eaters, who had managed to recover wands and keep them, also vanished. During the fight, Harry repeatedly saw both members of the Order and Death Eaters retrieving random wands from the vegetation in both gardens, only to be disarmed again by an opponent. He was surprised that anyone in the Order was still armed after the frenzied battle.

Still on the roof, Harry aimed his wand at the flower bed where the transfigured rock that was Dumbledore lay, removing the spell. When the old man put his hand on young Harry's shoulder, the boy jumped.

"Are you all right, Harry?"

The boy nodded, looking baffled. "Who was that? Where did you go? Can—can you throw your voice? You know—do ventriloquism? With magic?"

"Let us simply be grateful that we can get you out of here safely—without anyone else being injured," Dumbledore said, not answering the question. They both looked toward the fallen Moody and Harry remembered being sick with guilt at that moment. "Harry," Dumbledore said kindly, "Moody knew—he always knew—the risks of his work. He lived a very, very long time and sustained a number of injuries before—well—" Dumbledore's mouth was drawn into a line. Minerva McGonagall returned to her human form and looked grimly at Moody's body.

"I will see to him, Headmaster. You worry about Potter." But she wouldn't look at her pupil. Harry remembered how awful he'd felt when she'd said this. He sat on the roof tiles, hugging his knees with his arms. He'd managed to help in so many ways, but he couldn't save Moody, and he knew that he _shouldn't_ , even if he'd found an opening.

Young Harry looked at where Tilda had been. Harry remembered his assumption that she'd also been killed and wished that he could jump to the ground and tell him that she was all right.

"Here, Harry," Dumbledore said quietly, clearly also seeing the guilt on the boy's face. "We'll clear up the mess here," he said, dropping a phoenix feather into his hand. The moment it touched his skin, sixteen-year-old Harry Potter was gone in a brief, violent maelstrom.

#/#/#

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	63. The Last Good Day

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Sixty-Three**

 **The Last Good Day**

 **#/#/#**

Harry felt extremely uncomfortable. He swirled his drink in his glass, looking around at the others at the party, but there seemed to be no one present over the age of fifty. He was growing weary of pretending to be thirty-two. He longed for someone near his own age to talk to. He missed Parvati, _his_ Parvati, not the young woman who just thought of him as a friend and who would only ever think of him that way if he succeeded in changing the timeline.

He tried to tell himself that this would never work, not to get his hopes up. He would return and very likely find that nothing at all had changed, that nothing _could_ change. Neville would still be dead, Ginny would still be dead, and so would a host of other people, including Luna.

Harry watched Ron across the room, talking to Neville and laughing. He swallowed, remembering the huge row they'd had after he'd learned from Ron that he'd spoken to Draco only with lukewarm enthusiasm about marriage at this very party. He remembered shouting at Ron, telling him that he could at least be _sorry_ , that he could _say_ he was sorry that he'd done what he'd done, but Ron wouldn't admit to anything. When he thought about it later, Harry knew that he was being completely irrational, that Ron was probably beating himself up inside worse than anyone, but before he could calm down and think about how Ron was feeling, he said it, the unforgivable accusation:

" _I suppose you're pleased that this happened, since Neville is dead now and you can leave Luna and run off with Hermione. It's what you've both wanted for years._ "

It was the end of their friendship, despite Harry being married to his sister. After Harry had admitted to Hermione that he'd said this, it was touch-and-go whether she'd still be his friend as well, but she'd gritted her teeth and said that she was certain that he had let his emotions run away with him and that he hadn't meant it. Hermione had gone to Ginny for comfort, not daring to go to Ron after Harry's accusation, and when Hermione did tentatively make conciliatory noises about being Harry's friend again it seemed rather half-hearted. They invited her and Frances to dinner frequently after Neville was killed, but she seemed more like Ginny's guest, Ginny's friend, not Harry's.

And then Luna had done it. Harry had heard Ron talking to Ginny about it afterward, crying on his little sister after he'd become a widower: Luna had taken it into her head to work out what her mother had died from, which experimental charm had killed her. She had all of her mother's notes and decided that perhaps she could work out what she was trying to do, be successful at it, and perhaps it could help the Ministry to fight Pansy and the Harpies. No one ever found out what Luna's mother had been working on, though, unless Luna worked it out just before she died of the same thing. Ron came home after picking up the children at The Burrow, where Molly had been minding them, to find Lew, his father-in-law, unconscious in his study, breathing shallowly due to the fumes filling the house, and Luna in her little workshop just off the kitchen, slumped over her worktable beside the smoking cauldron, dead for hours.

Harry had tried, a little, to extend the hand of friendship to Ron, but Ron threw it back in his face. " _What are you going to do now, tell me that I wanted this to happen, too, so Hermione and I could be together?_ " Harry was stung but knew he deserved it. When he discovered, from Ginny, that Ron and Hermione had in fact started seeing each other again about a year after Luna's death, he had no problem refraining from saying anything about it. There was no point. Neither of his best friends spoke to him any longer. All he had left was Ginny.

And then he also lost her.

He'd had no one left to go to but Parvati, who had comforted him and then decided to try to break the memory charm he'd put on her on the night of his thirty-second birthday. Harry didn't know that yet, but when he found out that he would again time-travel, it became one of the few things in his life that he felt he had to look forward to.

And now, in a few hours, he would go back to _that_ world, the world in which he had no friends, just Parvati, his surviving children, the terror of Pansy and her Harpies, and a wizarding world of people who bowed and scraped to him as the Minister for Magic, though he'd tried to bring more of an egalitarian air to the Ministry. He'd tried to make a difference, he'd extended the hand of friendship to Ron and Hermione again, but when he let slip to Hermione that, in the midst of the Pansy-crisis, he was having Unspeakables work on creating one more Time-Turner, she was appalled, and Ron hadn't deigned to speak to him at all.

Harry jumped when Draco suddenly appeared beside him and started to speak. "You really know how to be the life of the party, yeah, Potter?" Draco said with a smirk. A rather scantily-clad girl who didn't appear to be much older than nineteen—Harry couldn't remember her name but had a sinking feeling that he'd given her rather poor marks in Defence when she was a Hogwarts student—was gyrating between Ron and Neville, making both of them redden, while Crabbe and Goyle looked as if they might faint from the sight. Zabini seemed bored and as if he'd had far too much to drink.

"Wuh? Oh, um, sorry, I'm just—" Harry went for honesty. "I'm just missing Ginny dreadfully. To tell the truth, I almost didn't come because I wanted to spend more time with her."

Draco guffawed. "You say that like you're never going to see her again!" he said, shaking his head and taking a rather large gulp of his drink. Harry looked at him levelly.

"I miss her every moment of every day that we spend apart," he said quietly. "I want to tell her about everything I've done when I see her again, and I want to hear about everything she's done while we've been apart." He looked Draco in the eye. "Please tell me that you feel the same about Pansy." _Please_ , he thought, _please say that you feel the same, that you couldn't imagine your life without her._

Draco scratched the back of his head. "Erm, well, yeah. Pansy's quite—well, you know—"

"I'll bet you couldn't stop thinking about her when you were in Azkaban," Harry said, hoping that this was helpful. Draco's expression changed slightly, softened.

"Well, that's true enough…"

"And when you saw her again after you'd got out," he added, not mentioning how this had happened, hoping he could maintain his tact instead of bringing up the plot to kidnap his children, "you were overjoyed, I'll bet."

Draco stared into the distance. "Yeah, yeah. I was."

"It really is like nothing else to be with someone who understands you, isn't it? Who practically knows what you're thinking before you do?"

"Hm?" Draco said, his mind clearly wandering.

"You and Pansy. You seem to be on the same wavelength."

"Wavelength?" Draco said, frowning. Harry realised that it might be a Muggle term; he'd never thought about it before.

"Yeah, the same—well, you know. You _get_ each other."

Draco nodded, taking a gulp of his drink. "That's true. Pansy could tell that—well, she could tell when my heart wasn't in it anymore." He had the good grace to look sheepish now. "You know—with the kids. All I really wanted was to go off with her. And yeah," he added, rolling his eyes a little, "I know I deserved to be in there after what I did, but I ended up making up for it, didn't I?"

Harry clapped him on the shoulder, hoping that this would really work. He wouldn't know until he got back to his own time. "Something I can definitely say wholeheartedly is that if there's one thing I want it's to see you married to Pansy, happy and content."

" _...and back in Gibraltar_ ," Ron finished, very quietly yet loud enough to be heard, causing everyone else present to laugh. Harry was glad to see that Draco joined in.

"That's me, as well. I would have got married there, at a registry office, but Pansy wanted to plan a big to-do with her family and all that."

"…and you love her, so you want to make her happy," Harry added, hoping that he wasn't overdoing the reinforcement of reminding Draco how much he loved Pansy. "You—you didn't like being with Penelope, did you, because you felt guilty about Pansy, yeah?"

Draco shrugged. "A bit, I reckon. And—well, you know, pretending to be someone else. Pretending like that in general is one thing, but in the bedroom…" He looked around furtively, as if worried that someone might think he'd gone soft. Harry wondered how much he'd had to drink. "I know breaking out of prison wasn't right, but that _really_ didn't feel right."

"Erm, looks like we need to get this party back on track," Harry said hastily, trying to convince himself that impersonating _himself_ at thirty-two wasn't the same at all. "To Draco and Pansy!" he said loudly, raising his almost-empty glass.

" _To Draco and Pansy!_ " the other guests chorused, plus the dancing girl, who was perched on Zabini's knee. He looked distinctly uncomfortable, smiling at her feebly. Crabbe and Goyle slapped Draco on the back enthusiastically, practically knocking him over, and Harry watched the three old friends, his former nemeses, never dreaming that the future happiness of Draco Malfoy was what he had to most hope for if _any_ of them were going to have future happiness.

" _To Draco and Pansy_ ," he repeated in a whisper.

# /#/#

Harry Disapparated to the ground again, arriving in Tilda's drive, where he took the spells off Percy's rock, then Snape's, Bill's, Dung's and Tilda's. Though she was no longer a rock, she was still stunned, lying on the ground beneath a shrub.

"Ow!" Percy cried, sitting up and immediately being stuck with sharp branches protruding from a hydrangea badly in need of a trim. Bill still looked like Rodolphus Lestrange as he leaped across the space separating him and his brother.

"Percy!" he exclaimed, pulling him to his feet and hugging him tightly. "You knew it was me, right? Bill? The potion will wear off soon, probably. Did all of that mean what I thought it meant?"

"Erm, what do you think it meant?" Percy said warily, as if afraid that one of his family members would again start shouting at him about being a traitor.

"You're _with_ us! Working for Dumbledore!"

Snape looked shocked by this revelation but did not comment. Harry felt a certain enjoyment from seeing his surprise, nonetheless. Mundungus Fletcher, still wearing Lucius Malfoy's face, appeared to be in his own world, peering into Tilda's garage. Harry wondered how much stuff she'd ended up missing because of Dung and was glad that the member of the Order with the stickiest fingers didn't know anything about the valuable collection of silver hidden upstairs.

Percy looked bashfully at his brother. "You mean, I _was_. My cover's blown. I can't go back to working for the Minister and telling Dumbledore what he's up to."

"Now, now, Mr Weasley—or Percy, I should say, since we have two Mr Weasleys here," Dumbledore said, putting his hand on Percy's shoulder. "You have performed your duties admirably and I have many things that you can do for me on the continent now that it is no longer practical for you to work for Cornelius."

Snape motioned to the still-unconscious Tilda. "Albus, there is still the matter of the Muggle woman."

Dumbledore regarded her with a small smile. "It was very good of her to shelter Harry, but now we should return her to her usual routine. If you would be so good as to take care of the matter, Severus?"

Snape nodded and opened Tilda's front door with a flick of his wand, then surprised Harry by picking up Tilda and carrying her inside without using magic. Harry swiftly Apparated from the front of the house to Tilda's lounge and was already standing near the television, still in his Invisibility Cloak, when Snape entered and carried her to the couch, putting her in a sitting position. Snape backed up, staring at her strangely. Harry felt as if he were seeing a person he didn't know at all. _He thinks she's pretty_ , Harry thought in wonder.

A second later, however, Snape's mouth was twisting in a very familiar manner. "What is it about the _Potters_ and—certain women?" he mumbled, making Harry remember what Teddy had told him about Snape competing with James Potter for the affections of Lily Evans. Then Severus abruptly lifted his wand and pointed it at Tilda. Harry strode forward, placing himself between her and the wand. He didn't know what Snape planned, but he couldn't let him do whatever it was to Tilda, even if he _was_ a member of the Order, even if he was going to marry her one day.

" _Obliviate!_ " The spell hit Harry squarely on the chest. He wobbled for a moment, then took a step to the left, maintaining his balance, just barely. He felt very odd and disoriented. Somewhere, a voice shouted, " _Enervate!_ " Perhaps. And then there was a soft popping noise and Harry felt like he was going to fall over again, so he stepped back to the right. He looked down and saw that the couch on which he was about to sit had a woman sitting on it, holding her head as if it hurt, so he tried to sit on the arm instead and missed, ending up on the floor, his Invisibility Cloak sliding off.

"Harry, is that you?" the woman exclaimed. Trying to bring his eyes into focus, Harry realised that it was a young Tilda Harrison.

 _Why does she look so young?_ he wondered, staring at her. Then he looked around at the room and realised that he was in Tilda's house. Except that it hadn't been her house for years and years. "What—when—what's the date?" he asked her.

"The thirty-first of July, nineteen ninety-six," she said promptly. "Are you quite all right, Harry? Is this a side-effect of time-travel? Sit here."

As he sat on the couch he shook his head, which felt rather woolly. "All right? Not really. I mean—why aren't you shocked to see me? Hang on—did you say time-travel? I found out that I would come here eventually, but how, exactly? What's going on?"

"Don't you remember?" she asked in alarm. Harry shook his head again.

"I suppose I feel a bit like—like I've had a memory charm put on me."

She looked thoughtful. "I'm—I'm missing some time as well. Didn't you tell me that wizards put memory charms on non-magical people who've witnessed magic? I saw a man in some long robes point a wand at me when I got out of the car after driving back from Brighton, and that's the last thing I remember before waking up. Do you think he put a memory charm on both of us? Wait, I'm the only one who knows you're here…"

Harry frowned. "That's true, no one who was at the battle ever told me they'd seen an older version of me, though I reckon they could have been worried about telling me that I'd time-travel in future. But how am I even here at all? _How_ did I travel back in time _sixteen years?_ "

"You told me that you used something called a Birthday Wish spell that brought you back exactly half your lifetime. You also told me that you'd had a memory charm put on you so you couldn't remember the second half of your life, only the first sixteen years. We stayed up talking last night, in my bedroom, and then, erm—"

"What?"

"Well, you slept in my bed, with me." She turned deep red and looked away from him. "Twice."

 _Why is she using the word 'twice' like that?_ he wondered.

Then it all clicked into place: he'd done it. He'd created his son, which he'd known for a while would very likely happen, but—

"Oh, Harry, don't look like that! It was—" Her expression softened and she slid her arm around his neck, bringing her mouth very close to his. Her other hand was sliding up his thigh with a light, tickling motion. "It was _very_ mutual. And it was lovely—"

As she leaned in and started to brush her lips against his, her hand moving ever upward, Harry let out a yelp and stood up abruptly, backing into an ottoman and nearly tumbling over.

"No! We—we can't do any more of that!" She looked shocked by his reaction.

"I'm sorry, Harry," she said stiffly, standing and smoothing her clothes down, looking embarrassed and rejected. "Of course, you don't remember how we could have come to that point." She turned red again. "I mean—"

"No, I'm sorry. It's you who doesn't understand. I'm deeply in love with my wife, Ginny. I remember the second half of my life now, everything but the last twenty-four hours or so. I love my wife, and my daughters, and—" He stopped before he said, 'my son.' _Tilda shouldn't know about that yet,_ he thought. "I'm sorry, Tilda. You probably feel that I misled you—"

She swallowed, digesting all of this information. "Well, to be fair, it sounds like you misled _yourself_."

He nodded. "But now that I remember Ginny, I couldn't possibly—"

"No, no, of course not," she said quickly, her voice rather higher than normal. Looking away from him again, she added, "I am glad to know that you get to be thirty-two, though. That you did it—you killed him."

Harry hesitated for a moment before saying, "Well, I reckon there's no harm in your knowing now, as long as you don't write any letters to me and tell me, but no, I didn't kill him."

She sat on the couch again and he sat in a chair to tell her about going through the Veil and then through the door to the Mystery of Love. He told her about forgiving Voldemort and about his death in Azkaban, a harmless old man called Tom Riddle. When he looked up, he was surprised to see that she was crying very quietly.

"So," she said shakily, wiping the backs of her hands across her eyes, "what did you do when you left here? When you were sixteen?"

"I went back to Order headquarters. The next day I talked to Ginny for a long time and told her about the last fortnight." He looked away from her, his face feeling hot. "I told her about falling in love with you." Tilda was quiet when she heard that. The silence hung between them, one of the most uncomfortable silences Harry remembered.

"Well, then!" she said suddenly, a false-briskness in her voice; "Why don't you spend the rest of our birthday telling me about how you fell in love with _her_? You said that Ginny became your wife, yeah? And you have daughters?"

Harry smiled, closing his eyes, seeing Ginny and the girls in his mind. "Yes. The twins, Ruby and Rory, and Little Charlotte." He opened his eyes again to see Tilda smiling at him and holding out her hand.

"Come on, then. To the kitchen. I'll make a pot of tea and you can tell me all about them."

He smiled and nodded, following her into the kitchen, sitting at the table and beginning with the story of what had happened during his sixth year.

#/#/#

Harry looked at his watch and thought, _Bloody hell. It's eleven o'clock!_ His birthday was nearly over and he'd spent the last few hours of it trying to convince Draco Malfoy that he really _really_ wanted to marry Pansy Parkinson.

Harry slapped Draco on the back, saying, "Well, I should get back to Ginny. Brilliant party! See you tomorrow," he said hastily, lifting his wand.

Ron stared at him. "What are you talking about, Harry? It's not even midnight!"

Harry wondered how much Ron had had to drink. And whether he might say anything he shouldn't to Draco Malfoy if he were left at the party without his best friend. "You should probably get back to your lovely wife as well, Ron. C'mon, I'll help you through the Floo network, so you get out at the right fire. Neville, can you get his other arm?" Harry said quickly. He eyed Draco Malfoy, who appeared ready to fall over. "And can you get Draco up to his bed?" he said to Crabbe and Goyle.

By the time he'd Flooed to Ron's house with him and Neville, then got back into the fire to go to Pansy's, it was already eleven twenty-five. He decided to use Floo again, having never been to the Parkinson house. As he tumbled out of the fire at the hen party he was shocked by the immediate cat-calls from the slightly tipsy women, and it took him several long moments to spot Ginny on the other side of the room, chatting with Hermione, Pansy and Luna.

"Good one!" cried one of Pansy's cousins, with a nose like a pig's snout. "Getting a wizard stripper who looks like The Boy Who Lived!"

"The Boy Who Stripped!" giggled another witch.

"That's my husband," Ginny said quickly, rescuing him from several sets of fingers that had started working at his buttons. "The _real_ Boy Who Stri—erm, Lived, I mean." Ginny turned bright red and looked a little uneven on her feet.

Pansy simpered at Harry, "I once went to a hen party where the maid of honour had hired two strippers—one who looked like you," she said, poking Harry in the chest, "and one who looked like your best mate. Soon they were down to almost nothing but their Gryffindor ties." She hiccoughed and then giggled. It seemed that the giggling would go on forever.

Ginny made a face. "I think that the last thing I need to see or think about is a stripper impersonating my brother."

"Oh, I don't know," Luna said dreamily, sounding as she always did and not even a little drunk. "I wouldn't mind that. He is my husband, after all."

Hermione nodded; her nose was a little red and she held a large pint-sized glass with very little ale left in it. "Yes, I wouldn't mind seeing that either," she said, slightly slurred, before looking around and adding quickly, "I meant, if it were my husband. Neville."

Luna smiled placidly at her but Ginny gave Harry a _look_ , with one brow raised. He leaned over to say softly, "We should get back to Parvati's shop. Nearly midnight."

She opened her eyes wide, remembering. "Oh! Right, right, of course." Turning to Pansy, she said, "We must go, Pansy. Get some rest, why don't you? Big day tomorrow."

Harry grinned at her. "Draco couldn't stop talking about how he can't wait to be married," he added.

Pansy looked touched. "Really?" she asked. Unfortunately Pansy then wanted a full description of what Draco had said.

When they were finally able to Apparate to Parvati's shop Harry was glad that he managed not to bang into anything this time. "Why don't you wait here while I get Parvati?" She nodded and looked at him with such love in her eyes that he couldn't resist reaching for the Time-Turner, thinking of how lovely it would be if he could go back to the beginning of the evening and suggest that they spend three more hours together and still go to Draco's and Pansy's parties. But no, he shouldn't do that. Other things to focus on.

However, the chain wasn't around his neck.

"Is something wrong, Harry?" Ginny asked, seeing his hesitation.

"No, I was just trying to remember where I'd left something. I'll get Parvati." He raised his wand and Apparated to the flat above the shop, arriving in Parvati's bedroom. She was sleeping peacefully, the dark grey cat barely visible in the dimness, curled at her feet. Harry lit the end of his wand to see her better. As he watched her sleep, he remembered the first time he'd spent the night in this room…

 _The evening had begun like many of their evenings together: Harry had brought a bottle of wine, Parvati was already frying samosas in her tiny kitchen, a pot of rice with peas and peppers nearby, some mint chutney waiting for the samosas. They ate and drank, moving into the sitting room afterward as they always did, listening to the Wizarding Wireless. Rather than talking this time, however, they found themselves lapsing into silence, and then found that they couldn't keep their hands off each other, couldn't stop kissing…_

 _Harry was surprised, still, when she rose and led him wordlessly to her bedroom. Ginny had been dead for more than a year and there wasn't a day that went by that he didn't miss her sorely, but something in him now seemed to be saying, Live. Don't die. Don't stop. There's a lot of life left to live. Live it. Starting now._

 _And he had. Afterward he lay in her bed, holding her in his arms, running his fingers through her long, soft hair._

" _Why is it that you're still single, Parvati?" he asked as he played with her hair. "You look like you did thirty years ago. Are all the other men in the wizarding world blind?"_

 _She snorted and kissed the base of his neck. "Mostly they seem to be—intimidated. I've had more than one bloke in the shop, chatting me up, and then as soon as he realises that I'm the 'Seer', not just a shopgirl, they back off and make an excuse to leave. One said to me, 'Don't go reading my mind now and become cross with me!'"_

 _Harry asked, "Can you do Legilimancy?"_

 _Parvati made a face. "No, of course not. I don't know where the idea comes from that a psychic or a Seer can read minds. Half the time I can't work out whether I ought to tell someone what I think I see in their Tarot cards."_

" _Well, I think those blokes probably meant that they were having rather naughty thoughts about you, so you really wouldn't need to be a mind-reader to work out what those thoughts were."_

 _She sat up, feigning shock. "And have you been having naughty thoughts about me, Mr Potter?"_

 _Harry looked sheepish. "For a little while, yeah."_

" _Good," she said, grinning. "So have I. About you, I mean. But I wasn't certain that you were interested in—have you gone out with anyone since Ginny?"_

" _No," he said quickly. "Not that I haven't had the opportunity, mind you." He shook his head. "Honestly, some of the witches who've been throwing themselves at me in the last year… I thought it was bad before Ginny died. And my own students! After a sixth-year accused me of—well, you know—Minerva got her to confess that it was the other way round—I'd rejected her. Since then I've always made certain that there is a female professor present if I need to meet with a female student." He sighed. "I'm considering giving up teaching."_

" _That's awful!" she said. "So then—no one, is that what you're saying?"_

" _It's not as if I haven't had a social life. I've come over here for dinner. Molly and Arthur have me over quite a lot. So do Percy and Penelope, and Bill and Fleur. Even Severus and Tilda." He sighed. "Of course, my former best friends, who are now married to each other, won't even share a drink with me."_

" _You think it'll work out this time? The pair of them?"_

" _I hope so. I'd like to be able to tell them that I hope so, too, but you know how stubborn they both can be. I'm glad Ginny was able to see them get married, though. Before—well. I get news about them from the rest of the Weasleys. I don't think Ron will ever really stop thinking of Luna, nor Hermione of Neville, but then, I doubt that I'll ever stop thinking of Ginny."_

" _If you were the sort of person who could do that, I doubt that you'd be here now," she said, smiling. "I shouldn't like you half so much if you could forget her very easily."_

Harry swallowed before shaking her shoulder gently. "Parvati," he whispered, then, "Parvati!" a little louder.

She blinked and then realised who was sitting on her bed. "Harry! What are you—"

"It's nearly midnight, Parvati. Almost time for me to go back. And for _him_ to come back."

She rubbed her eyes and shook herself to wake up. "Right, right," she mumbled, getting out of bed and reaching for her dressing gown. Harry's heart turned over as he watched her, realising for the first time that if Draco and Pansy did marry, chances were that Parvati would not be waiting for him when he returned to the future, at least not as someone who was in a relationship with him. It was wonderful that Ginny might be there yet, alive and well, but no matter what happened he'd be losing someone he cared about.

He followed her down the stairs. Ginny had dozed off on the couch near the Astrology section. Harry and Parvati tried to be very quiet when walking through the bead curtain into her Reading Room, after which he checked his watch again. "Ten minutes," he whispered. He thought of his grandchildren—they would be different people or never have existed. So much would change, possibly not for the better, if Pansy didn't start to terrorise the wizarding world in less than twenty-four hours. But he couldn't think that way—it _had_ to be better. Even if he had different grandchildren, or if his children married different people…

He stared at Parvati, remembering kissing her goodbye before travelling back to his thirty-second birthday. He'd had no idea that he might not be returning to _her_ , to the same future he'd left. He couldn't not step toward her and say, "Parvati, I'd like to thank you for everything. _Everything_ ," he repeated, feeling like he was speaking to _his_ Parvati, who knew him so well. He could tell that she was startled when he cupped her cheek with his right hand and said softly, "Where I come from, you are the dearest person in the world to me, but if I've succeeded in convincing Draco Malfoy to go through with his wedding, this could be the last time that—" He faltered, swallowing, gazing into her bright, dark eyes. She wasn't pushing him away but looked slightly anticipatory, and he wondered if she'd seen this coming, seen it in her crystal ball or a spread of Tarot cards, or in the bottom of a teacup. "Parvati—can I kiss you goodbye?"

She swallowed again, but she also gave him a very small nod. He leaned down and caught her lips with his; they immediately parted, admitting him, and he laced his fingers into her hair. She seemed afraid to touch him, tentatively putting her hands on his arms as they kissed.

"I hope—I just wish you all the best, Parvati. And there's something else—"

She pulled out a chair at the table and sat down, frowning. "What is it?"

"Well, first, do you have a piece of parchment and a quill?"

She summoned these items from a nearby dresser that held a paisley-patterned tea service. "Yes. What now?"

"We talked about this, remember? Please write this down: _Do everything in your power to ensure that Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson get married tomorrow._ Make sure you put the date and time." He was about to have her write a second note to herself, telling herself to memory-charm thirty-two-year-old Harry when he returned, so he wouldn't remember his experience with Tilda, but then he remembered sitting in Tilda's kitchen, drinking tea with her and telling her all about Ginny and the girls. He'd already been memory-charmed! That he'd utterly forgotten this made him start to laugh—he'd forgotten about when he was memory-charmed—but he looked at Parvati and saw that she was clearly not in a laughing mood. He'd never seen her so dead serious.

"Who is it directed to?"

"Anyone. Everyone. Just—can you tell me something? When you see a piece of parchment like this, can you recognise your own handwriting? Can you tell that it was definitely written by you?"

"What? Yes, of course I can, Harry. Why—?"

" _Obliviate_!" He suddenly pointed his wand at her; Parvati's eyes slid out of focus as he quickly threw on his Invisibility Cloak. He started to check his watch again, but just as he saw that it was midnight he felt a wind rise out of nowhere in the tiny room, and the past was soon slipping away from him…

#/#/#

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	64. Mine Forevermore

**#/#/#**

 **Replay**

 **#/#/#**

 **Chapter Sixty-Four**

 **Mine Forevermore**

 **#/#/#**

"Ginny! Ginny!"

She struggled to open her eyes and when she did, Harry was running across the floor of Parvati's shop. She sat up and Harry pulled her to her feet, hugging her tightly. She put her arms around him, unable not to cry, and then he was kissing her and all she could think was, _He's back, he's back, he's back…_

When he let her come up for air she could see that he was crying, too, gazing at her lovingly, as if he'd been away for a minute, not a day. She pulled away long enough to reach into her pocket and take out his wedding ring, putting it back on his finger without speaking as he leaned down to kiss her again. After breaking the kiss, he smiled at her in a way that made her feel that, even though her husband had just travelled back in time and slept with another woman, she was the luckiest woman in the world.

"Thank you," he said softly. "For giving it to me this time and the first time."

She sat on the couch and Harry sat with her. "Did you miss it?" She tried not to ask, "Did you miss _me_?"

"I don't know," Harry said, frowning, which she supposed was an honest answer.

"Oh, that's right!" she said, remembering. "The memory charm! You didn't remember being married."

"Well, actually, I did. That spell must have worn off after a while. I reckon."

"You reckon?"

"Well, I—I don't actually remember any of it now."

"Any of _what_?" She felt very confused.

"Any of the last twenty-four hours, and a bit before that."

"That makes two of us," Parvati said, standing in the doorway of her Reading Room. "Can you tell me exactly what the two of you are doing here, and why I'm not asleep in my bed? Or perhaps I _am_ asleep in my bed and my dreams have become strangely literal."

Ginny went to her and Harry followed. "You look like you need to sit down, Parvati," Ginny said, but when she entered the room she saw that that was no longer possible. The chairs were splintered, lying in pieces on the floor and on the overturned bookcases. Books were strewn all over, broken teacups and saucers littered the floor, and the crystal ball lying beside the upturned table on which it had sat had a large crack running through it.

"What happened in here?" Ginny said, surveying the destruction. She hadn't heard anything in the shop.

"Must have been the Birthday Wish spell," Harry said, bending over to pick up the crystal ball.

"The what?" Parvati asked.

"The spell that allowed Harry to travel back to his sixteenth birthday," Ginny told her, waving her wand to repair a shattered teapot. It leapt onto a dresser, soon followed by its companion cups and saucers.

Parvati stared at both of them as if they were mad. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"But—you're the one who told us about the spell," Ginny said reasonably.

"Wait—when I said I didn't remember the last twenty-four hours, you said, 'That makes two of us.' How did you know it was twenty-four hours?" Harry asked Parvati.

"I looked at my clock," Parvati said, nodding at the carriage clock on her mantle. "Time _and_ date on that one. It now says the first of August. Fortunately, it's not broken, I think. I picked that up first, put it on the mantle, and then heard your voices in the shop. _Is_ it the first of August?"

Ginny waved her wand at the chairs, repairing them, and righted the table again, so they could sit at it. "Yes, it is. Listen," Ginny said, trying not to let her voice shake, "I seem to be the only one who wasn't memory-charmed, so let me try to explain. Last night, you called Harry to say that it was time, Parvati. Time for him to go back to his sixteenth birthday."

"Called? But you two aren't on the Floo network," Parvati said.

"On a mobile."

"On a—where would I have got a mobile?"

"Harry said that you said it was borrowed. Anyway, we came here and you told Harry about the Birthday Wish spell."

"But _who_ told _me_ about that? And once again, why don't I remember?"

Ginny looked helplessly at her. "I have no idea. On both counts. But Harry _did_ go back in time sixteen years."

He nodded. "That's true, even though I don't remember all of the last day."

"Yes, you said, but _why_ don't you remember that? You were only supposed to forget the second half of your life," Ginny said.

Harry shook his head, then told them about waking up in Tilda's lounge and being told about the Birthday Wish spell by _her_ , among other things.

"So—you don't remember doing _anything_ with Tilda?" Ginny said anxiously.

Harry shook his head. "Other than sitting in her kitchen and telling her all about you and the girls—no. I made certain not to mention Teddy, of course. I think it'll be fine, telling her that much of the future. It reassured her. I won't be in contact with her again until Teddy goes to Hogwarts." He opened his eyes wide, having remembered something. " _That's_ why Tilda knew about you when I went to see her after Teddy started school."

Parvati held her head in her hands. "I simply do _not_ understand."

"You should go back to bed, Parvati. Are you going to Draco and Pansy's wedding this afternoon?" Ginny asked.

"No, I wasn't invited."

"Just as well. You can sleep late, and sod it all if people can't get into the shop in the morning."

"Actually, customers _could_ get into the shop if they wanted. They just couldn't take anything out of it. Anti-theft spells on everything. After something's been paid for, the spell lifts. If anyone tries to Apparate away with something they haven't paid for, when they go, it stays behind. Or if they try to walk out without paying, whatever it is disappears from their pockets the moment they're outside and it reappears on its shelf."

Ginny was impressed. "Very neat! I wonder if Fred and George know about that?"

Parvati made a scoffing noise. "Who do you think told _me_ about it?"

Ginny laughed. "All right, you help Parvati upstairs, Harry, I'll finish cleaning in here."

When they had gone, Ginny resumed the repairs on various objects, until the only thing still out of place was a piece of parchment in the corner. She summoned it into her hands and saw that there was writing on it. Parvati appeared to have written herself a note, and for some reason she included the date and time: _31 July, 2012, 11:55 pm_. A time that neither Parvati nor Harry now remembered. The note was very terse:

 _Do everything in your power to ensure that Draco Malfoy gets married._

Ginny frowned, since Parvati had said that she wasn't invited to the wedding, and then, for some reason she couldn't name, she put the parchment in her pocket when she heard Harry's footsteps on the stairs. They returned home soon afterward.

She didn't mention the parchment to him.

#/#/#

Ginny felt very peaceful when she lay down to sleep again in their bed at St Clare's, Harry by her side. When she awoke in the morning she could hear Harry singing in the shower, which made her smile. She rolled over and punched her pillow with the intention of getting a little more sleep, but she couldn't find a cool spot to lay her head, so she decided to turn the pillow over.

Two things met her eye when she picked up the pillow: the faded old portfolio that she _knew_ should be on the upper shelf of her wardrobe, and a fine gold chain. She pulled on the chain and a tiny hourglass emerged from the space between the mattress and headboard. She gazed at it in wonder, no doubt in her mind that it was a Time-Turner, from what she'd heard Hermione say about it. _Where did this come from?_ she wondered. _And why is this portfolio under my pillow and not in the wardrobe?_

There was only one possible answer: she was _meant_ to find these things. She put the Time-Turner around her neck, tucking the hourglass inside the bodice of her nightgown, and untied the ribbon on the portfolio.

She glanced through the drawings, which were more yellowed than she remembered. Then, when she turned over the drawing Dean had done of her on the bed, something caught her eye—and then made her _stare_. The entire back of the drawing was covered with writing. All of it was very similar, but the writing at the top was a little firmer, more assured.

 _My Dearest Ginny,_

 _I'm so sorry, Ginny, I can never say how much. I'm sorry to ever have put you through the pain and uncertainty of wondering whether I wasn't telling the truth about me and Tilda. As far as I know I did not sleep with her on my sixteenth birthday. Except that it turns out I did, as a thirty-two-year-old man. I would do anything to change that but I don't know how to without endangering anyone. When I did it I didn't remember how much I loved you and didn't want to hurt you. I didn't know I was married to you, that you are my wife and the mother of my daughters._

 _But now the memory charm has worn off and I do remember, I remember it all, and I feel as if my heart is being torn out of my chest, because if this causes me to lose you then my heart_ _should_ _be gone—_ _you_ _are my heart and my love and I don't deserve you and your love and your patience._

Ginny wondered when Harry had been able to write the note, but she remembered Ron and Hermione being convinced that the front door of number twelve, Grimmauld Place had opened and closed. _And now he probably doesn't remember writing it,_ she realised.

 _I hope that when I return you read this and that there is some hope that you won't leave me. If you do, however, I wouldn't blame you. Any man would be lucky to be married to you. I am the luckiest man, wizard or Muggle, that I know. And that is because of you. I have treasured living and working with you, raising our children, making love to you. Sharing my life with you._

 _There is still the battle tonight at Tilda's and Mrs Figg's. I think I need to do something important there, to preserve the timeline. If anything happens that prevents me from returning, remember that I have always and will always love you. You are truly my better half._

 _With all my love,_

 _Harry, aged 32_

 _31 July, 1996_

Below this was another scrawled note in very similar but more spidery handwriting, beginning the same way:

 _My Dearest Ginny,_

 _It is a wonderful gift to see you again as a young woman, to hold you, to make love to you. I must admit, however, that I was not completely honest with you when I said that the Birthday Wish spell split me in half. I have travelled back in time again, half my life. I used a Time-Turner to go back a little farther, to tell Parvati about the spell and lend her a mobile._

Ginny touched the lump of the Time-Turner, under her nightgown, and thought, _That's where this and the mobile came from!_ Her heart thumping excitedly, she continued to read:

 _Since everyone will remember seeing me yesterday but I won't, you'll have to come up with something to tell me. I know you will. Parvati won't remember anything, however, because I'll be putting a memory charm on her before returning to the future. She'll break it eventually and learn the truth, but the time hasn't yet come for her to know._

 _One last thing, Ginny—your wish of our someday having a son will come true next year, on Teddy's birthday. We'll name him after Dumbledore. I'm sure you'll work out which of his names sounds best with "Potter". I love you, my dearest Ginny, so very much. Please remember that always, for the rest of your life, however long that may be._

 _Yours forevermore,_

 _Harry, aged 64_

 _31 July, 2012_

Ginny didn't know when she had begun to cry but tears were wetting her nightgown. She heard Harry turn off the water in the shower and she stuffed the portfolio back under her pillow, leaning against it as Harry opened the door to the bath. He immediately spotted that she'd been crying as she hastily wiped the tears from her cheeks.

"Ginny! Are you all right?"

She couldn't stop crying, somehow, thinking of the life growing inside her, the gift Harry had given her for his own sixty-fourth birthday. She stood and wrapped her arms around him, so glad to have her thirty-two-year old husband back, though she hadn't known that it was the sixty-four-year-old Harry with whom she'd shared the previous day. His skin was still damp from the shower, smelling of sandalwood soap. He kissed her soundly and she smiled at him through her tears.

"I'm just glad that you're back," she said finally. "I missed you so, yesterday. I had to put spells on everyone who was here for the party, so they believed you were here, too, rather than cancelling," she improvised quickly. "So if someone mentions the party, just go along, or say it's all a bit of a blur for you or something like that. Oh, and the same for Draco's stag party and coming to pick me up at Pansy's afterward." She started to go into the bathroom but stopped and turned to face him, no longer feeling like crying. She felt very happy—and a little mischievous—instead.

"Have you ever thought about stripping?"

"Wh-what?" Harry choked. "Where did that come from? Hang on—did they actually have strippers at the hen party?"

"Well, not as such. You'll find out someday why I asked you that."

"Oh, _someday_ , will I?" he said, smirking.

"Yes. I have faith in you, Harry." She stopped and scrutinised him as if she'd never seen him before. "You really are quite—resourceful." She laughed at the puzzled expression on his face. "Don't think too much about it. We have something _much_ more important to do today."

"We do? What's that?"

Paraphrasing the note she had tucked into the drawer of her bedside table, she said, "We have to do everything in our power to ensure that Draco Malfoy gets married."

Harry stared at her, puzzled. She went into the bathroom and leaned against the door, closing her eyes as she pictured the Harry with whom she'd spent the previous day. She just knew that he had left her a message about the future by having Parvati write the note before he put the memory charm on her. And if future-Harry thought it was important, she had to trust that. It _was_ important. Probably as important as leaving her with the gift of their son.

Taking out the Time-Turner and holding it in her closed fist, she whispered, "Thank you, Harry."

#/#/#

Harry picked himself off the floor, thinking how much easier it had been to do this sort of thing when he was only half as old. The room wasn't quite as much of a mess as it had been thirty-two years earlier, perhaps because it was only affected by one Birthday Wish spell this time, not two, but it certainly wasn't as Harry had left it. He waved his wand, putting it to rights. He assumed that Parvati was upstairs. They still maintained separate residences, though they rarely slept apart.

He accidentally put a chair down rather hard after repairing it in mid-air, and he heard footsteps overhead, followed by the sound of someone coming down the stairs.

"Bloody hell, Harry. What've you done to my wife's place of business?" Neville stood framed in the doorway in his dressing gown, his wand out. He looked rather tired and had a receding hairline, but it was _Neville_! He was _alive_!

"Neville!" Harry cried, throwing his arms around him. Neville grunted in surprise. The new memories came cascading into Harry's mind…

 _He was sitting with Ginny at the wedding, waiting and waiting for Draco Malfoy, everyone growing very restless, and then Ginny excused herself, coming back a minute later looking very self-satisfied. Draco marched in with his groomsmen to stand with the Ministry clerk and wait for his bride to walk down the aisle._

 _Luna had still died while attempting to learn how her own mother had died, unfortunately, though it was later and not because she was hoping that what she learned might help the Ministry fight Pansy and the Harpies. Ron was comforted by Ginny and Harry, but mostly by Hermione's friendship. And then one day Hermione had shown up at St Clare's in tears because Neville had gone to the Ministry registry office to file divorce papers. He told her that she'd never really stopped loving Ron and she was the only one who didn't seem to know that. He felt that it was only right to give her her freedom, to let her go._

 _Evidently, he'd gone to see Parvati for a reading, and after demanding that she tell him the truth about what she saw in the cards, she'd admitted that it appeared that he was holding someone prisoner, someone very dear to him, but who should be given freedom, which would also free him._

 _After the divorce was final, Neville had asked Parvati to dinner, to thank her for waking him up and to assure her that he didn't resent her for telling him the truth. Soon they were seeing each other, and a year later Ron and Hermione were married and Neville and Parvati were married as well. Near their first anniversary, their first son, Kumar Longbottom, had been born._

 _And after Brian finished his seventh year at Hogwarts, Harry and Ginny retired from teaching, Teddy took over their old teaching job, and Harry was tapped to be Minister for Magic, in a much more peaceful wizarding world than the one besieged by Pansy and her Harpies._

Neville gasped and Harry released him, laughing, as Parvati appeared behind him, rubbing her eyes sleepily.

"Neville, Parvati," Harry said, grinning at them both, "how are your kids? Your lovely, lovely kids?"

Neville frowned at him and stepped back, as if afraid that Harry might give him another crushing hug. "The kids are grand, Harry. Are _you_ all right?"

"Never better, mate. Never better!"

"Harry?"

A familiar voice came from the shop. Harry turned, his heart thumping in his chest as he remembered Ginny at the wedding again, thirty-two years earlier. He burst through the bead curtain and walked around a bookcase. There she was, standing in front of the couch, looking almost as she had thirty-two years earlier, except for having cropped her hair short, so it showed her neck and curled over her head, still vivid ginger, with only a white hair here or there. He ran to her and threw his arms around her, laughing and crying at the same time.

Ginny was also laughing. "Harry, you act as if you hadn't just seen me the day before yesterday!"

Harry pulled back a little and gazed at her dear face. "It feels a lot longer."

After they finished helping Parvati and Neville to clean up, they thanked them again and Apparated back to the graveyard at St Clare's. Harry grasped Ginny's hand as they walked to the house, grinning at each other in the moonlight.

"Can I ask you something, Ginny? Where did you go when we were waiting for Draco and Pansy's wedding to start?"

She stopped and stared at him. "Harry, that was thirty-two years ago!"

"Not for me."

She laughed. He wanted to crush her in a hug again, he'd missed that laugh so much. "You really want to know? You're not the only person who occasionally time-travels." She touched the gold chain she always wore at her throat and withdrew something from inside her robes, hanging on the chain. Harry's jaw dropped when he saw it.

"Where did you get that?"

"You left it in our bed. I don't think you meant to. It was under my pillow with something else I think you _did_ mean for me to find: the portfolio."

"You read it? You never said!"

She smiled at him lovingly. "At any rate, you asked me about the wedding. I slipped out of the marquee and found an inconspicuous cupboard in the house, so I could go back a few hours, using the Time-Turner. Then I tracked down Draco upstairs and gave him a good talking-to. Oh, and I helped him to mend his dress-robes. He'd ripped them on something and was rubbish with mending spells—Pansy's brother, too, who was also there—so I helped him with that. Which seemed to be the main problem, actually. He was a bit surprised that I wanted to make certain he still wanted to marry Pansy. He said, 'Of course I do, don't be daft.' You know how _tactful_ he always is.

"Of course, then I couldn't _let_ him come downstairs until it was nearly the time from which I'd travelled, but Pansy wouldn't have any of that. She came upstairs to find out what was keeping him, and she wanted _in_. Her brother didn't want to let her. He's very superstitious and kept going on about its being bad luck, but I let her in because I don't hold with superstitious rubbish. She _was_ a bit miffed to find _me_ there, but a bit less miffed when she saw her brother. We explained about the robe-mending. She and Draco made up well enough, but then they _really_ started making up…" She cleared her throat. "Draco suggested to her that they put everyone in a bit of suspense about it all, so her brother and I left them to their own, erm, devices. Parkinson wasn't very happy with me, either, but personally, I think it was _good_ luck for Pansy and Draco to be together before their wedding, not _bad_. When it was close to time, I watched myself leave the marquee from behind a topiary shrub on the lawn, I walked back into the marquee, and soon after that the wedding began. With a bride in rather _wrinkled_ wedding robes," she added, giving Harry a wink.

She looked very pleased with herself. Harry's jaw dropped. "Are you telling me that the reason he hadn't come downstairs yet was that he couldn't mend his own bleeding robes? And that if her brother had succeeded in keeping Pansy away from Draco—"

Ginny stared at him. "If her brother had succeeded in keeping Pansy away from Draco _what_?"

"Oh, erm, nothing. Never mind." He couldn't prevent a rather large grin from creeping across his face as they continued to walk to the house. "Everything's just fine. And as it should be."

He wondered for a moment why neither she nor the Longbottoms had questioned his hair not being white, and then remembered that he didn't do that in this timeline. He looked down at their joined hands, surprised to see that his wedding ring was back on, though when he'd left he hadn't been wearing it. All day, at his thirty-second birthday party, Ginny hadn't questioned this, probably because she knew that he'd taken it off before time-travelling back to his sixteenth birthday, and he was a 'copy' of that Harry, so of course he had no ring.

When they entered the quiet house, which Harry knew would later be filled with the happy voices of his children and grandchildren, coming to celebrate his birthday a day late, he couldn't resist taking Ginny in his arms and twirling her around the drawing room in the moonlight streaming through the stained glass windows, singing to her as badly as he ever did while she laughed and gazed lovingly at him and made him feel like the luckiest person who'd ever lived:

" _Every summer we can rent a cottage on the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear... We shall scrimp and save. Grandchildren on your knee: Vera, Chuck, and Dave..._ "

"Those aren't their names," she interjected, laughing. "And—well, anyway, it's Tilda and Severus who go to the Isle of Wight—"

He pictured Tilda and Severus as he'd last seen them, eighty and eighty-four, growing old together, quite happy and content.

" _Send me a postcard, drop me a line, stating point of view_ ," Harry continued to sing very badly. " _Indicate precisely what you mean to say: Yours Sincerely, Wasting Away. Give me your answer, fill in a form: mine forevermore…_ "

Finally, Ginny joined in with him at the end, almost laughing too much to manage to get the words out: " _Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?_ "

They stopped singing and dancing and laughing, standing in the middle of the drawing room, holding each other tightly, and the look in her bright brown eyes as she leaned up to kiss him told him the answer to the song's question, the answer he'd always known.

#/#/#

 **THE END**

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 **Note:** Once again, the song Harry is singing is "When I'm Sixty-Four", credited to Paul McCartney (and often John Lennon, too), copyright 1967, Northern Songs.


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